Joomla! + Community Builder custom groups

There is no build-in function in Joomla yet for custom user groups according to your needs. You're obligated to use Joomla's default groups, or to use JaCL (commercial), which is not always possible, depending on the project.

If you use Community Builder, and that you wish to use different user groups, each owning their own custom tabs (and fields), there is a solution. It is possible to set a custom tab only for a user group; you only have to split correctly fields to tabs, to show or not to show a tab, depending on the user group that owns it.

This article will show you how to apply a manual hack to Joomla 1.5.x to allow using different and custom user groups for Community Builder.

A good advice would be to save backups of your files before doing anything, because it is really a mess to do.

Joomla! and CB versions used in this tutorial are Joomla! 1.5.9 and Community Builder 1.2 RC4.

create custom groups in joomla

The first step is to create custom groups in Joomla build-in group system. For the need of this article, we'll say that we are creating a job website for a online community that needs two user groups : employers and employees.

This only part of the tutorial is taken for Joomla documentation, because I'd like to make a very complete tutorial. Don't follow steps on documentation's page, it's no more up to date.

The mess begins here : you must edit the database, and then execute a script to restructure it correctly. I won't explain here how is working the table that contains user groups in Joomla; I'll only show how to edit it for your need.

Access to your database (with PHPmyAdmin, in my case). Find user groups table (its name is « jos_core_acl_aro_groups »). Default prefix for tables is « jos », but check what is your prefixe and replace « jos » by your table prefix if it's different. In all examples, I'll use « jos » as prefix, but don't forget to change it on every code you'll copy and paste from this tutorial.

 

Then, In PHPmyAdmin, I found « jos_core_acl_aro_groups » table. This table contains all my user groups. We will insert two new groups : one for employees and one other for employers (or what ever you want). You must correctly specify as parent_id the id of the parent user group. In our case, it'll be simply Registered (id : 18). We add these records, specifying only the parent_id value.

Our groups are now inserted, but their level values is wrong, because this table uses a category level system with a left and right value (integers), that, according to some calculation, allow to specify which group is embed in which group, but we inserted no value for this. No panic : we have a script to regenerate the good values for both new groups.

Create a file named rebuild.php, place-it at Joomla's root with this inside :

...don't forget to change « USERNAME_DB », « PASSWORD_DB » et « NAME_DB » for the username, the password and the name of the database.

Run the script in your browser, by opening rebuild.php page. Normally, you should not notice something; the script doesn't write any confirmation (so you get a blank page). Go to check what it does look like in the database, if you understand a little bit how's working this category level system... else, try to go on the next step, it should be okay.

how to distribute PROFILES to right user groups?

The idea itself is really simple : In Community Builder, you can set a user group to a tab.

To go on with this example, go to Community Builder's component page, click on Tab Management and create two new tabs :

« About my business » : Set this tab to « Employer » group, and don't forget to publish it.

« Job experiences » : Set this tab to « Employee » group, and don't forget to publish it.

Each custom user group now owns its own tab. As tabs that do not contain any field won't show up, go to Field Management, and create for these two new tabs  field (same name as the tab, let's say), and don't forget to place each of them in the right tab.

We created two new custom groups, and in Joomla!'s reality, there are only three access levels : « public », « registered » and « special ». These levels are embed into each other; a « special » user will also own rights of a « registered » user. It causes a problem, because we wish that each user have its own tabs, without any mix!

For instance, the employer owns in its profile a tab to describe what's about is business, but the employee doesn't need this tab at all. One of the two groups will have more rights than the other, then we must find a way to make them independant from each other.

Now it's time to make some dirty coding : we must apply a little hack to Community Builder so that tabs are well splited. Don't forget to save your file before any modification! Numbers of code lines are given for CB 1.2 RC4, so if you use a older version, look for the same lines but their place may have changed. There will be three replacements to do; please note that we let the replaced line, commented.

Open this file : [VOTRE SITE]/administrator/components/com_comprofiler/comprofiler.class.php

Look for this line (line 3036) :

Replace it by this :

Look for this line (line 3493) :

Replace it by this :

Look for this line (line 3550) :

Replace it by this :

That's it, your file is now correctly patched!

Then, if you make a test by creating a user for each user group, each user account should normally see its own custom tab in its profile.

how to include right users into right user groups?

Now that display of custom tabs for custom user groups is working correctly, we must face another problem : how to include right users into right user groups?

Let them choose, of course!

A good thing for us, a plugin for that already exists : CB JLS Group Selection, created by Jorge Luis Savoini. Be aware that this plugin only works with Community Builder 1.2 RC3 !

After you downloaded the plugin, install it (Bottom of Plugin Management page of component Community Builder).

In Field Management page, create a new field named exactly « cb_usertype », « Drop Down (Single Select) ») type. Insert 2 values, exact names of your two groups (in our example, it is « employer » and « employeer »).

Click on the plugin (JLSGroupSelector) in the plugin list of Plugin Management page to configure it.

Now that it's possible to access configuration of JLS Group Selection, be sure that the plugin is published AND enabled.

All you have to do is asking user on registration to fill up the « cb_usertype » field, to force it choosing his user group itself.

That's all! It's pretty complex for something that should be so simple to do...

Thanks to Jorge Luis Savoini for his help concerning this custom user group problem and for his very useful plugin!