CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm new to CiviCRM and have been doing a lot of reading here and in the documentation.

I may not "get it" yet, but I see that a lot of people are basically wanting Joomla Administration and CiviCRM Administration to be separate, and this seems reasonable.  I find that CiviCRM will only function as SuperUser, and I can't find a way to change that.  It really looks to me that CiviCRM should be installed on the "Site" site of Joomla, not the "Administration" side, but then maybe I just did something wrong.  Anyway, I can't find good solutions or answers within the forum (maybe I'm not searching properly), but here is mine:

In Joomla Administration (backup of your Joomla Installation before you do this)
1.  Select Users -> Groups
2.  Add a new group under Super Users.  I called mine "Admin Interface Group"
3.  Select Users -> Access Levels
3.  Add a new Access Level.  I called my "Admin Interface" and select the "Admin Interface Group" as it's only group
4.  Edit the "Special" access level and make sure "Admin Interface Group" in NOT checked. 
5.  Select Users -> User Manager and look at all of the users (especially the user you are logged in currently) that should have Joomla Administration capability and make sure they have the "Admin Interface Group" selected.  If you don't, the next step would be bad....
6.  Select Extensions -> Module Manager and then filter at the top for "Administrator" instead of "Site".  You will see all of the modules that make up Joomla's administration.   Also filter for Access = "Special" to get the non-public modules only.
7.  Select all of the modules using the checkbox at the top of the left column and use the batch process at the bottom to change the Access Level to "Admin Interface".  That should do it.  Oh, and of course you will need a user that is a Super User but is not in the "Admin Interface Group" to test to see that this works.

I hope someone will tell me that there is a better more obvious way to run CiviCRM without the Joomla Administration interface.

Please add your comments (especially if you're a Joomla expert).