In this article, I will cover the basics of creating your first login form which you can use to begin setting up a members section. Before we begin, let's start out by creating a new category, article and link this article to the menu.

First let's begin creating our category called members. To do this you will need to select content from the menu, followed by category manager and then add new category. Next enter in your title for your category and the alias and then click save. You will also need to select registered for access to assure that only registered users can access all articles under this category. For example, if you assign the members article to the member's category and the member's category has an access level of registered users only, then the article will inherit those permissions and also become registered users only.

Next you will need to create a new article called members and place that article under the member's category. To do this, select content from the menu, followed by article manager and then add new article. From the article manger you will need to add the title and alias "members" and select the member's category. Then in the text section I simply added the text "this section can only been viewed by members".To add the members section to the menu we will use the menu that was created earlier in the creating Joomla menu's article. To add a new item to the menu, select add new menu item from our site menu and enter the name and alias members. Similar to before you will also need to set the access level to registered. 

Now that we have our menu and article setup for our members section we will need to create a new login module, to do this select extension from the menu and then click module manager. You will then be asked to select what type of module you would like to create, as we are creating a login form, select the login module.

Next you will need to enter a title for the login form that will be displayed above the form and select the positioning for your template. I selected the left position, however you can use which ever position that you feel is suitable for your site or template.

When the user logs in, it is also a good idea to redirect them to the member's page, to do this you can select the Members page that we created earlier from login redirection page and simply select home for the logout redirection page so that the user does not receive a permission error on logging out. Finally click save from the top to save any changes you have made.

If you now log out as administrator and browse to the main page of your site you will be able to see a login form from the front page, but you will not be able to see the member's link from the menu. You should now also be able to create an account or login from the form using your administrator username and password. Once logged in you will now notice that the member's link from the top menu will be visible.

That's all there is to it. Now you have yourself a fully functional membership section, which you can customize and add content to. However it is a good idea to remember that any new articles that you create in the members section should be placed under the member's category so that they inherit the same permissions. This can save you a lot of time instead of editing the access levels individually.

Source: increaserss.com