Joomla: Local and remote installations.

Joomla is probably one of the most popular content management systems (CMS). It enables you to build powerful websites and online applications. Many aspects, including it’s ease of use and extendibility, and the fact that it’s open source, and freely available makes it very popular.

Joomla was written in PHP. For this reason, you will not be able to work with Joomla unless it is running in a server environment.
There are more than one way to set up and install Joomla. In order to develope websites with Joomla, you will need to get the following:

Get the latest version of Joomla

For Windows machines: Wamp
WAMP stands for Windows Apache, MySQL and PHP.

For Mac machines: Mamp
MAMP stands for Macintosh Apache, MySQL and PHP.

Installing Joomla:

There are two ways to create a website with Joomla: You can either install it directly on the server, on your domain, or you can create the site on your developement machine, and then upload it to your domain.

1. Installing it on your WAMP/MAMP server:

A: Firstly, open up your webbrowser, and in the address bar, type this address in and hit enter: 127.0.0.1 This is the address for ‘localhost’ and will take you to your wamp server homepage. Click on the phpMyAdmin link.

Type in a name for your new database and click on Create.

B: The next step you need to do, is to download the latest version of Joomla and unpack it. Copy it to your webroot directory and open it in your browser. You’ll be met with this screen:

Here you can just select all the relevant options and proceed untill you get to the 3rd screen.

C: Here you will have to insert the details of your new database.

HOSTNAME: Localhost
USERNAME: In WAMP, you can type in ‘root’ here.
PASSWORD: In most cases, you can leave this blank.
DATABASE NAME: This is where you will put in the name of the database you just created.

When you are done, click on next. On the next screen, you can type in your FTP details, should you so wish. Most developers and designers use FTP software for this function, so it isn’t mandatory that you use the Joomla version. The next screen is where you will put in other information about your website, like the name/title. You will also specify your admin email address and password – something you will have to remember if you want to access your site’s admin section.

(You have the option to install sample data. If you haven’t worked with Joomla before, it’s probably a good idea if you do. )

The last step is to delete the installation folder. You are now ready.

2. Installing Joomla on your domain:

You have two options when wanting to install Joomla on your domain: You can either install it from cPanel, or upload it to your domain via FTP.

Installing via cPanel:

Log into cPanel. Scroll down to Software and Services and click on Fantastico Deluxe.

On the next screen, you will see a list of all the Fantastico software available in cPanel. Click on the Joomla version you want to install. On the right of the screen, click on install. On the next screen, you will see this:

The installation part here is basicly exactly the same as on WAMP, except that you don’t have to create a database first. The Fantastico installation script will create it for you. When you are done, you have the option of having the details of the installation mailed to you.

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Installing via FTP:

A: Log into cPanel and go to databases.

Click on phpMyAdmin and create a new database, the same way as you did it in section 1.A.

A: Unpack your Joomla download in a folder on your harddrive. Use your FTP program to upload it to your server. Open your domain in your browser.

HOSTNAME: Localhost
USERNAME: type your database username
PASSWORD: type your database password here
DATABASE NAME: This is where you will put in the name of the database you just created.

Go through the rest of the steps to finish the installation. Remember to delete the installation folder when you are done.

Installing a pre-packed Joomla installation.

It is possible that you may need to install a pre-packed Joomla installation. An example of this will be the H-Connect hosting package. It comes with a pre-configured SQL database that you will need to import into your existing database.

Step 1: Unpack your Joomla package, and upload it to your domain. Run through the normal installation steps, and set up your installation as you would normally do it.

Step 2: Set up the new database

Log into cPanel, and go to Databases. Click on phpMyAdmin again. You will see the name of the database you created on the right. Select it by clicking on it once. You will see a list of all the tables in the database. Select all of the tables.

You will see a dropdown list – select it, and then choose “Drop”. Confirm this action, and you are done.
On the right, select your database again. Select “Import”.

In the File to import dialogue, browse to your SQL file. Select it, and import the database. You will get a confirmation message if it was successful.