Hi guys pretty new to joomla and just wondering what are the benefits of having registered users ? basically what special content or pages can be assigned only to registered users? why would visitors want to be registered (apart from receiving newsletters etc..) any information would be great lost for ideas cheers
Joomla is a cms that was built for variety of purposes. It all depends on what purpose you are using Joomla for. For example if you are using a shopping cart with joomla you might want users to register before they make a purchase. Also if you want users to contribute to your site (i.e. Posting articles or comments) you might want them to register (and may be approved) before they can spam on your site. If your site is informational only and you don't want any contribution from users then you dont need the registration part.
Within the basic Joomla you have 3 sets of users, unregistered, registered and special. The special group is for users with admin rights (creating content etc.) You can assign menus and content items to user groups and you can extend the user groups using something like JUGA or JACL. You can use registered users to show and hide content, RokAccess for example is a plugin that allows you to turn on and off pieces of content for differant user groups. One of the popular ways I use registered users is with our software product sites. Unregistered users see lots of information about the product in general and most of it is directed at them registering and downloading an evaluation version. Once a user has registered and logged in, they are able to download and the content is directed at them buying the product. All depends on what you want to do with it really.
I use Joomla to manage my membership sites. In conjunction with JACL, I have various levels of membership. I currently use public, registered (basic) and premium memberships. When I publish an article or video I can determine who can access of that content.