Frontend login

Going further it is actually possible to require proper authentication to access parts of the information contained in your web site.

Frontend users

As with the rest of TYPO3 CMS, users are also separated into frontend and backend users. Backend users are used to authenticate into the backend and are used to manage your TYPO3 CMS installation, create pages, input content, etc.

Frontend users live strictly in the frontend and are used to restrict access to pages, content elements and any other type of information which relies on the same mechanism.

Frontend users are always part of frontend groups. Access is granted to groups, never directly to users. Users and groups are defined as any other record and stored in any suitable page in the backend.

Use your new skills to create a new page of type "Folder" and name it "Web site users".

Creating a folder for storing the users and groups

Switch to WEB > List view and select your new folder. Click on the "Create new record" icon at the left of the docheader. The new record wizard appears.

Selecting what type of record to create with the new record wizard

Click on "Website Usergroup" to create a new frontend group.

Creating a new frontend group

Just give it a name, that's enough to get started. Save the record and close it. Now use the new record wizard again, but click on "Website User".

Creating a new frontend user

The minimum input required here is a user name, a password and a selection of at least one group. You can see how our newly created "Private area" group is available for selection.

You can add personal data to your user if you wish, but it is not needed. You can save the record and close it.

Access rights

Now that we have at least one group, we can start assigning access restrictions. Let's create a new page called "Members only" and restrict it to the "Private area" group.

Restricting access to the page to a given group

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Two default groups appear in the list of groups. They are not strictly groups, in the sense that they are always available and cannot be edited nor removed.

The "Hide at login" group means that the element is only visible when the user is not authenticated. The "Show at any login" group is used for elements which require authentication to access, but are okay for all groups to see.

Notice how the page icon changes as soon as you save the new user rights. It's a visual reminder that this page is not public. If you try to access this page in the frontend, the TYPO3 error message "Page Not Found" will be shown.

Login box

The next step is to place a login box somewhere so that visitors can authenticate and view the restricted information.

Let's change our setup with the following step:

  1. Remove the access restriction you just placed on the "Members only" page.
  2. Create a "Text" content element, which says something like "You need to authenticate to access the members area" and choose the "Hide at login" group for it.
  3. Create another "Text" content element with a text saying "Welcome to the members area" and choose the "Private area" group as access right.

You should have something like this:

Placing access restriction on individual content elements

Now let's add a login box to the party. Click on the "Create new content element" button located between the two existing content elements. In the new content element wizard, move to the "Form elements" tab and click on "Login Form".

Give it a header and move to the "Plugin" tab.

Defining a new login form

The Login Form has many options, but the only one which is absolutely necessary is the "User Storage Page". Use the record browser icon to call up the page tree and choose the "Web site users" folder.

Save and view the page. You should have something like this:

The page with the login box

Enter the user name and the password you defined earlier for the new frontend user and you should see the following:

The page with the authenticated user

Note how the content element requesting authentication has disappeared, replaced by the one welcoming the user.

This is just a quick overview of the login box provided by TYPO3 CMS. It has a rich feature set described in its own manual.