Practical Joomla!

 The Joomla! CMS is created to allow multiple users to add content to the website. This is no problem if you actually have users logging into the system and adding their content, but imagine the following all too common scenario:

You have multiple content writers sending you their content, and you want to post their content using their name. The writers should not be able to add content themselves, but it is done by you.

The way Joomla! works, is that each user name has to have its own unique mail address, which is logical, but not very practical when they do not add their writings themselves. What you want is having multiple users sharing one mail address, so you do not have to set up mail addresses for all these users, which are not being used anyway.

There is a workaround to have Joomla! allow multiple users using the same mail address, but it requires a bit of changing code: 

• Fire up your favorite FTP application – I use CuteFTP – and go to your web server
• In your Joomla! install folder, go to folder libraries/joomla/database/table
• Download file user.php to your desktop (or a location you prefer) and create a safety copy of the original file (user-original.php or something similar)
• Open file user.php using Notepad and do a search for the phrase 'check for existing email'
• You will find the following code:

     // check for existing email
    $query = 'SELECT id'
     . ' FROM #__users '
     . ' WHERE email = '. $this->_db->Quote($this->email)
     . ' AND id != '. (int) $this->id
     ;
    $this->_db->setQuery( $query );
    $xid = intval( $this->_db->loadResult() );
    if ($xid && $xid != intval( $this->id )) {
     $this->setError( JText::_( 'WARNREG_EMAIL_INUSE' ) );
     return false;
    }
  

• Delete all of these lines (nothing more, nothing less) and save the file
• Upload file user.php to the server to the same location you retrieved it from – folder libraries/joomla/database/table – and overwrite the original file

Now Joomla! will allow multiple users using the same mail address!

Beware: when you update your Joomla! install, user.php will be overwritten and these changes will have to be done manually again!

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Robin Roelofsen

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface."
Jaron Lanier