The Daily Technocrat

Getting a little stressful now – I’ve used up about 3.5 hours getting a machine set up with the Ubuntu OS, setting it up to be a web server, and finding all of the Joomla packages that look like they might be remotely helpful in my situation.
This last step is actually pretty important to the ‘Rapid Prototyping’ that I’m doing. By grabbing 3 or 4 calendar modules, for example, I won’t have to waste time going and looking for another one if the first one is junk. I can just throw all four of them into the site and see which one fits the site best. This is where having a popular and modular Content Management System like Joomla is helpful.

In addition, it is also important to note that there are a lot of modules out there that allow you to connect Joomla to other web systems. A perfect example of this is a phpBB forum. Basically, I would install the forum in the /forum directory of my web server, install Joomla in the /joomla folder, and find a little module that links Joomla to the forum and provides the SSO that I’m looking for. This is definitely another plus for Joomla, in that you not only have LOTS of modules to choose from, but chances are that you can tie other web apps into Joomla.

Speaking of Joomla…

Installing Joomla

Got the latest .zip install file from joomla.org? Make a folder on your desktop called ‘Joomla’ and extract the contents of the zip file to that folder. Windows has a free extraction utility built in, but a lot of people use WinZip (trial version – free!).

You should have a 10MB folder now. I know, it’s huge. But worth it.

Fire up your favorite free FTP client, I use an old version of WS_FTP. It’s not offered by the company any more, but you can find a copy of WS_FTP LE here: oldversion.com.

You should have an FTP account set up for the server. FTP into the server using your credentials, and find the web root. This will be listed as /wwwroot, and might have folders like /public_html and /public_ftp in it. If you’ve got a folder called public_html, open it up. Transfer the /joomla folder from your desktop to the web server. This will take a while, so we’ll go do something else for a bit.

Setting up the MySQL database for Joomla

You should have phpMyAdmin installed. If you don’t, install it. It’s a big help in managing the MySQL backend of the web server. Log in to MySQL and create a user named ‘joomla’ (no quotes) and give it a password. Then create a database called ‘joomla’ (no quotes) and give the user ‘joomla’ all-access rights to the database. What we’re doing here is giving the joomla installation its own user credentials so it can work with the MySQL server without having to use a person’s name and password.

Joomla should be done uploading by now. If it’s not, see if there are any other components you might want. Or look for a template that will make your web site look the way you want. I went over to joomlaya and found a few good ones that are 1024 pixels wide (a lot of templates are only 800 wide – watch out if you don’t want this). As with the components, the look of my site might not be what fits your situation.

Now that all of the files are on the server, fire up your browser and go to http://yourserver.domain.com/joomla. You should be greeted by the ‘pre-installation check’ page. Yes, it really is going to be this easy!

Check that the required folders have the right permissions. You can usually set the permissions using your FTP client. If having the permissions set to 755 doesn’t work, you can set them to 777 and then switch them back to 755 later. Test to make sure this works on your web server though. Don’t worry about configuration.php, we’ll get it later.

When able, hit next. Agree to the GPL, next.

host name – localhost
username – joomla (remember?)
password – **********
DB name – joomla
database prefix – jos_

This last setting is OK. A lot of tables get put in the joomla DB from components, etc., and the table prefix just makes it easier to tell what tables belong to what component. I’ve seen some components rely on the jos_ prefix for Joomla tables, so just leave it.

I always install sample data. It’s easier/faster to modify existing menus, etc. than to create them.

Name your site.

Enter in an admin email address and password.

You can choose what default permissions get applied to new folders and files when you install components, etc. I kept the defaults.

OK, this part is important. Fire up the FTP client and copy the text it gives you and replace the contents of configuration.php-dist with that text. Rename configuration.php-dist to configuration.php. Delete the /installation directory. NOW you can see your site by clicking the ‘view site’ button.

The website is online. And has a lot of sample news and menus. Good job.

Summary

Time spent in this article: 60 minutes
Time remaining for project: 325 minutes
Goals accomplished:

• Set up MySQL for Joomla
• Install the Joomla Core
• Find a template that will make Joomla look like I want it