Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems available today. For many users, Joomla allows a user to manage a fully functional website with minimal effort and only the most basic background knowledge. For many people, setting up and installing Joomla will be the most technically advanced aspect of running their website. This article can show you how.
What is a Content Management System?
A content management system (CMS) is software that creates an interface between a web author and the control of the site. In it, pages (treated as articles) can be organized into categories, and categories can be organized into sections.
This hierarchical structure in combination with the online administrative interface allows a web author to manage website content easily. For example, every article within a category can be made only visible to registered users by making that category only available after logging in. Without a content management system, this sort of change might be tedious and insecure for people without an advanced knowledge of web programming.
Why Joomla?
As with any software, it’s important for the prudent end user of a content management system to choose one that is well-established. Aside from the resulting extensive documentation on how to fix errors or confusions (which one might find in a forum, for example) it’s also important that the end user choose a well-supported system.
Online, the more popular something is, the more likely it is to be supported and expanded upon. In this case popularity is a measure of security and Joomla is one of the topmost content management systems available in terms of popularity.
Downloading Joomla
Joomla can be downloaded from the Joomla site. For the sake of simplicity, one should download the .zip file and save it to the local desktop.
Hosting Options
If one plans to host Joomla on a third party hosting service, it's important to be sure the hosting service provides PHP as part of the plan. PHP is a programming language which Joomla will require to fetch information from the server, for example, to check passwords for logins or to add items to a shopping cart. If one plans to run their own hosting server, again, it's important to be sure the Apache server (PHP and MySQL database) software is installed and running.
If one prefers to demo Joomla on an at-home personal computer before launching it publicly, it's handy to first download and install XAMPP. XAMPP is a free program that runs MySQL and PHP locally and creates a virtual server on a home computer. XAMPP is recommended for getting to learn how to use Joomla.
Quick and Easy Installation
Once one has uploaded the files to the planned site hosting service (or have them downloaded and extracted onto a local computer), open a browser and go to your site (http://www.yoursitehere.com/ or if one is using a localhost, http://localhost/yourjoomlafolderhere/). When the site is accessed for the first time, the user will be directed through a series of steps with default settings (there’s no need to change the settings) until one comes to a page asking the user to enter a username and password. This is for administration of the site so it's important to be sure the login information is something easily remembered and strongly encrypted.
The final necessary step is to name the site. Now Joomla is ready to play around with. One can modify the content and format, as well as download extensions to expand the functionality of Joomla.
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