Did you missed the Guest access level in Joomla 1.7?

After struggling for years to set up menu items shown only for guest visitors in various Joomla/Mambo versions prior Joomla 1.7, was a real relief to have an easy and foolproof way to do it. No hacks needed, no scripts to add, no configuration trickery... you simply selected from the Access Level dialog the Guest access group for anything qualifying for this settings (modules for example, but not only..) and you where set! And if you upgraded your site from Joomla 1.7 to Joomla 2.5 the feature where still there. Recently I had a big surprise, I needed the feature in a brand new Joomla 2.5 site... and don't found it!!

Frustration is a kind word... but I was confident, that must be doable somehow. And, finally, I found an easy, fool-proof solution!

 Here it is, it's only three simple steps, but saves you from lot of headaches.

Step 1.

Go to Users>Groups, and add a new group, , name it... "Guests" tongue_out Select as parent the group Public.

Step 2.

Go to Users> Access Levels and add a new access level, name it ... yeah, I named it "Guests" tongue_out, and add in the& User Groups Having Viewing Access the user group you created in Step 1.

Step 3.

Navigate to User Manager→Options→Component and change the Guest User Group from the default value of "Public" to "Guest".

Step 4.

What??? The original promise was 3 steps, right? Yeah, but this one is important too, even if the solution works withouth this step. So, once steps 1-3 done, kiss your wife, open a bottle of wine, or do anything else you like to do after you have your daily little success, and enjoy! You got the fully functional Guest access group back.