Joomla! Documentation™

I use custom user groups (user roles) within Joomla 1.5. For example under the registered users group I've added several subgroups:

myproject
 customers
  customer A admin
 product manager
  product manager admin
 etc....

I use these groups within my extension to set the permissions.

When I add the groups into the jos_core_acl_aro_groups table and set the relations correctly the groups in the user management are not displayed correctly (e.q. the administrator groups disappear). For displaying the groups correctly you will have to change the code of : /administrator/components/com_users/admin.users.php line 285:

if ( $userGroupName == $myGroupName && $myGroupName == 'administrator' )
   {
      // administrators can't change each other
      $lists['gid'] = '<input type="hidden" name="gid" value="'. $user->get('gid') .'" /><strong>'. JText::_( 'Administrator' ) .'</strong>';
   }
   else
   {
      $gtree = $acl->get_group_children_tree( null, 'USERS', false );

into

if ( $userGroupName == $myGroupName && $myGroupName == 'administrator' )
   {
      // administrators can't change each other
      $lists['gid'] = '<input type="hidden" name="gid" value="'. $user->get('gid') .'" /><strong>'. JText::_( 'Administrator' ) .'</strong>';
   }
   else
   {
      $gtree = $acl->get_group_children_tree( null, 'USERS', true);

If you like to add your self custom groups do the following:

Edit the jos_core_acl_aro_groups table and add your custom groups (for example with phpmyadmin). When you add a new group make sure that you assign the correct parent to the added group. For example: the joomla registered group has the ID 19, when you assign a subgroup to it make sure that the parent_id is 19. Dont assign the lft and rght fields yet but use the code below to rebuild the groups tree correctly:

    <?php

    mysql_connect("localhost", "xxxx", "xxxxx") or
        die("Could not connect: " . mysql_error());
       mysql_select_db("joomla15");

    // 0-> parent_id in Joomla this is the value of the parent_id field of the Root record
    // 1-> start the left tree at 1
    rebuild_tree ( 0 , 1);


    function rebuild_tree($parent_id, $left) {
      

    // the right value of this node is the left value + 1
       $right = $left+1;

       // get all children of this node
       $result = mysql_query('SELECT id FROM jos_core_acl_aro_groups '.
                              'WHERE parent_id="'.$parent_id.'";');
       while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
           // recursive execution of this function for each
           // child of this node
           // $right is the current right value, which is
           // incremented by the rebuild_tree function
           $right = rebuild_tree($row['id'], $right);
         }

       // we've got the left value, and now that we've processed
       // the children of this node we also know the right value
       mysql_query('UPDATE jos_core_acl_aro_groups SET lft='.$left.', rgt='.
                    $right.' WHERE id="'.$parent_id.'";');

       // return the right value of this node + 1
       return $right+1;
    }
    ?>

When you want to use the custom groups to assign to your articles so that for example only the customers can view specific articles you need to add these groups into the jos_groups, just assign the ID + name of the group whereby the name must be equal to the groups names you added into the jos_core_acl_aro_groups table.