Below is the default installation of Joomla 1.5.15 with the default Joomla template. As you can see, it has an user login form on the left hand column.
If your use case of your website is such that you do not need this login form, then this tutorial will show you how to remove it. It will also show you how to place this login form in an different URL location so that those few users who do need to access the login form can do so if you provide them with the new URL location.
1. First to remove the login form from the home page, log into Joomla administrator and go to "Extensions -> Module Manager". In the Module Manager, find the module named "Login Form" and click on it to edit it.
2. You see how the "Home" is selected in the "Menu Selection"....
This is what is causing the login form to show up in the home page. Now click the "None" radio button so that none of the menu selections are highlighted. And then click the "Save" icon to save the settings. If you now go to your website in a new browser window and refresh your browser, you will see that the login form will have disappeared from the home page.
If you don't want to have any login form at all, then this is all your have to do. If you want the login form on a different page, then continue with the rest of the steps.
3. We are now going to create a new page where we can put the login form. And we'll call this page the "Publisher Login" page. At this point, the instructions will assume that you are in SEF (search engine friendly) URL mode. See tutorial on how to turn on search engine friendly URLs. The following technique only work with SEF URLs turned on. If you need to do with SEF URLs turned off, see note at bottom.
4. Create a new article called "Publisher Login" by going to "Content -> Article Manager -> New" and provide settings as shown ...
Since articles must be contained in a Section and a Category, place this article in an arbitrary Section and Category, or create your own section and category specifically for this Publisher Login page.
5. Now that we have this publisher login page created, we need to create a menu for this page so that this page can be accessed via a URL. That way, we can provide this URL to specific people who really need to login as publishers. However, we do not want this page to be navigable via the menu by the general public. So what we need to do is to create a "hidden menu" -- a technique that can sometimes be useful.
Go to "Menus -> Menu Manager -> New" and create a menu as shown.
Click "Save". This menu and its menu items will not be visible on your site because the menu is not listed in "Module Manager" with a template position specified.
6. Now create a menu item for this menu by going to "Menus -> Hidden Menu -> New" and select "Article Layout" as the Menu Type ...
7. Give the article a title like "Publisher Login" and the alias "publisher" (in all lower case, because this will be part of the URL used to access this menu item).
Select our new article "Publisher Login" and set it to display in "Hidden Menu" with the options shown...
8. Now that this hidden menu item linked to our Publisher Login article has been published, it should be accessible if you enter the URL with /publisher after your domain name....
This is assuming that you have search engine friendly URLs turned on.
9. Note that this Publisher Login page does not have the login form yet. We give it a login form by going to "Extensions -> Module Manager". Click on the "Login Form" module again. For menu assignment, choose "Select Menu item(s) from the List" and highlight "Publisher Login" as shown...
Click "Save" to save the setting.
10. Now when you refresh the browser of your Publisher Login page, you should see the login form present.
So this will be the URL that you give to your publisher who needs to access the login as publisher. Otherwise, the general public will never need to see the login form.
Note
The above technique only work if the SEF URL is turned on. If you must leave SEF URLs turned off, then instead of creating a "hidden" menu in step 5, you need to add the Publisher Login page to a visible menu somewhere on your site.
If you need to put Publisher Login on an "obscured page" that is not on any visible menu while SEF URLs is not turned on, then it will be difficult. However, it still can be done with the aid of a developer using a different method that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. You need to add a new module position slot in the template. Wrap this slot in a condition so that this slot is only visible on the Publish Login page. Assign the Login Form module to this position slot.
