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How To Install Joomla: A Tutorial

February 2, 2010 By Jon 2 Comments

Joomla is frequently referred to as the Internet’s most user-friendly and beneficial Content Management System. To benefit from its capabilities you need only download it and install it on your servers. Of course, that’s easy to say, but what if you are not familiar with content management software? How to install it? Is it something that is difficult to do?

A lot of people will find that existing tutorials on how to install Joomla presuppose that certain things have been done when they have not. The absolute first thing you must have done before you seek to install Joomla is to have web hosting on one of the Internet’s many web host servers. If you do not already have that, then search on Google for “cheap web hosting” and select one that is suitable for your purpose.

Once you have web hosting for your site, you should have access to your “cPanel” (short for control panel). Whatever the URL of your site is, the URL for your server will be the same, with “/cpanel” on the end of it, and will be accessed by entering your user name and password. Usually, your hosting service will have a module known as Fantastico. This is the easiest way how to install Joomla. If you have Fantastico on your web hosting, then you need only open it and click the Joomla link that will be there. On doing this, you will be taken through the setup process and have access to Joomla instantly.

However, not every server has a Fantastico module and if this is the case, then you will need to manually install Joomla. This is a longer process but, if followed correctly, does not need to be particularly long-winded or problematic. Firstly, check that your web host meets the following requirements:

  • PHP 4.4.3 or better
  • SQL 3.23.x or better
  • Apache 1.13.19 or better

If it does not, then you will need to get these requirements in place – it will not be difficult – and then download the set up file from Joomla.org. It will now be on your computer in whichever file you have downloaded it into. You now need to log into your cPanel and upload the Joomla file which should still be in “.zip” form. You can unzip it in your cPanel by clicking on it and then clicking “Extract” on the cPanel toolbar.

As long as this process has taken place, you then need to check everything has been done correctly. You do this by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/Joomla_folder (although obviously putting the name of your site into the URL above). If any errors have been made, they will show up on the screen in red. You can either correct them manually or, if you don’t know how, contact your host. Assuming there are no errors, or that all errors have been corrected, you then go to the configuration mode, where you set up your site.

Setting up the site is done by following a range of options, which are concerned with configuring a database and setting passwords. Once this process has been carried out, you are ready to run your site using Joomla to update it.

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Setting Up A Site For Someone Else With Joomla

January 17, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

It is unavoidably the case that to make a success out of your business these days, you are going to need some web presence. Even for reasons beyond business, there are many people who want to have that online capability anyway, for reasons from blogging to campaigning. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that setting up a website is just like speaking a foreign language – some people can do it naturally, while some people cannot ever do it no matter how much effort they put into learning.

Some people will find it difficult even when using a content management system, such as Joomla. It may well be the case that a friend – who may be an excellent salesman or a truly honest politician, but a complete novice when it comes to the Internet – needs to set up a website and, although they have no idea how to and you are no web designer, asks you to help.

The best bet in this case is to use Joomla. It is probably fair to say that there are three levels of internet literacy:

  • There are those who are fluent, and can do anything with a bit of code.
  • There are those who speak only the basics, and need help to get anywhere.
  • There are also those in the middle who will find that with the right materials they can put together a pretty good understanding and create something worth using.

Let’s assume that you are from the third group and your friend is from the second.

What you are looking to do is put together a website that may not entirely be the absolute height in online quality, but is nonetheless worth reading, easy to navigate and contains the right content. Your first step has to be finding out from your friend what they want their website to say. A short consultation is advisable, aimed at finding out things like:

  • Who they want to read it
  • How many pages they want
  • The key points the site needs to cover

In doing this, you can plan the website to some degree before committing it to the Internet. It means that you are able to get in place a vision of what your friend wants their website to look like, say and do. Once you have planned the content for the website, you can then set about using Joomla to make the website itself.

Before you actually construct the website, you will need to pay for web hosting. It is possible to get this for free, although free web hosting is notoriously unreliable – but you don’t need to spend too much money on any supposedly “better” hosting providers. There are some perfectly reliable and efficient hosting sites which will do everything you need them to for a monthly fee in the region of $6.50. One of these will do the job perfectly. Once this is done, all you need to is install Joomla and start updating the site – you can be active within hours if you have something relatively simple to put in place.

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