Joomla! 2.5 Beginner’s Guide

Enabling self-registration—allowing visitors to register

In the previous section, you've set up new user accounts manually in the backend using the User Manager. Giving a team of content contributor's access to the site is a great way to collaborate in maintaining the site and keeping its contents up to date.

Another way to open up your site is to enable user self-registration. That way, a user community can develop and any amount of users can register themselves without the site administrator having to do or approve anything (of course, the administrator is still in charge and has the ability to block or remove users).

Registered users don't contribute content, but they do have exclusive access to parts of the site where the Access level is set ...