Tiggeler Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition

Build, develop, and manage a fully functioning, professional looking, and feature-rich website with the Joomla! CMS
3. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78398-151-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 476 Seiten

An easy to use, step-by-step guide to creating professional, mobile-friendly websites with the free Joomla CMS. The Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide Second Edition is the ultimate guide for web developers who wish to build upon their skills and knowledge on creating websites. Even if you're new to this subject, you won't have any difficulty understanding the clear and friendly instructions and explanations. No prior knowledge of HTML and CSS is required.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tiggeler, Eric

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik EDV & Informatik Allgemein

Leseproben

Time for action – running the Joomla! installation wizard

You've got all the Joomla files copied to the web server and you've got a database ready to be filled. Let's finally install Joomla!

1. Enter the URL for your site (such as ) in your browser. The installation screen shown in the following screenshot will come up:

   Tip

   
   

   The Joomla installer will check whether your web server setup meets the installation requirements. If it does, you'll be taken to the Main Configuration screen. However, if any of the required web server settings isn't met, you won't be able to install Joomla. In that case, Joomla will display a screen of required settings and mark the ones that require attention. If there are any problems, get in touch with your web hosting company to have them correct the web server settings for you.

2. In the Main Configuration screen, change the settings and enter the following information:
   • Select Language: Using this option, you can select the language you want to use during the installation (if you need to change the default setting).
   • Site Name: In this field, enter the name for the website. This will be displayed in the browser's title bar (and in some cases, in the site header). In this example, we've entered Corba—you'll learn more about this esteemed client for your example site in later chapters.
   • Description: It's okay to leave this field blank for now. Here, you can enter one or two sentences explaining what your site has to offer. The information is important for search engines, but you can add this at a later stage through Joomla's configuration settings.
   • Admin Email: Enter a valid e-mail address in this field. Joomla will use this to send system messages and it will be used as the e-mail address for the default administrator user account.
   • Admin Username: In this field, enter the username you'll be using when you administrate the site. For security reasons, you'll want to choose a username that's not too easy to guess (preferably something more original and safer than , which was the default administrator username in previous Joomla versions).
   • Admin Password: Enter the site's administrator password in this field. This is a different password from the one you've entered previously for the database user. This new password is created here. Now, you'll use this to log in to Joomla after the installation. Choose a strong password, not something that hackers can easily guess. Make a note of administrator username and administrator password!
   • Site Offline: This is set to No by default. After installation, the (empty) site will be immediately online. Don't change this setting now. If you were to select Yes here, after installation of Joomla, visitors will see a message that the site is temporarily offline (and a login form for site administrators). This way, you can make the site you're developing accessible only for yourself after logging in.
3. Click on the Next button and you'll be taken to the Database Configuration screen that is shown in the following screenshot:
4. In this screen, enter the following details:
   • Database Type: You can probably leave this set to MySQLi. Currently, most web hosts support MySQL Improved (MySQLi), which allows faster and more secure communication with the database than the traditional MySQL database type.
   • Host Name: This is usually localhost (unless your web hosting company has provided you with another name).
   • Username: Enter the username for the database you created earlier in the section. If you haven't created the database yourself, your hosting provider should be able to provide you with the database and user details. In our example, the username is databaseadmin.
   • Password: Enter the database user password you'd created when setting up the database. Again, if the hosting provider has created the database, they should be able to provide you with the user password for the database.
   • Database Name: Enter the database name you chose when you created the database. If you haven't created the database yourself, you can enter the name you have received from your webhost.
   • Table Prefix: You can leave this unchanged. A table prefix is relevant only when one database is shared by several Joomla installations. This way, each of them can look up the appropriate data in the database by checking for the correct prefix.
   • Old Database Process: This option is only relevant when you've installed Joomla before and need to empty the tables (the contents) of a previous database. Select Backup to backup existing database contents from a previous Joomla installation, or select Remove to remove them.
5. Once the Database Configuration screen is complete, click on Next. Joomla will now check whether it can connect to the database.

   Note

   
   

   If you see an error message, you probably made a typo when entering the database details. Make sure you have typed the password correctly. You can go back to the database details screen, enter the correct data, and click on Next again.

6. If all goes well, you are taken to the Finalisation screen, which is shown in the following screenshot:
7. Although this is an impressively long screen (you'll have to scroll to see it in full), its main purpose is to give you an overview of all current settings. You'll only have to make one or two choices here:
   • Install Sample Data: When you create a Joomla site for the very first time, it's a good idea to install sample data. You can choose from several sets of sample data; for example, you can select Blog Sample Data to install Joomla with some example blog articles, menus, and modules. In this case, select Learn Joomla English (GB) Sample Data. Using this sample data option, you get a ready-made sample site to build upon that is already filled with example pages, menus, and extras. If you want to follow the exercises in this book, you'll need to install Learn Joomla English (GB) Sample Data.

     Note

     
     

     If you don't install sample data, you have to create all content from scratch. You'll prefer this option when you're Joomla-savvy and know where to start, how to add content, and how to customize things. Installing Joomla without sample data is also required when you want to install a basic multilingual site—although you can just as well enable Joomla's multilingual capabilities later on. (See Appendix B, for more information on creating multilingual sites.)

   • Email configuration: Select Yes if you want Joomla to send you an e-mail with an overview of all site settings. When you select Yes, you'll be presented with an extra option: whether you want to send passwords via e-mail too. For security reasons, it's recommended not to send passwords via e-mail.
8. Click on the Next button to start the Joomla installation and it will display the progress. In a few seconds, you'll be presented with the following final screen:
9. Just one thing left to do and you're good to go. Before you can use Joomla, you must delete the folder named . This folder contains information that's needed for the installation, but is now no longer required (and you do not want to reveal its contents to hackers). Click on the Remove installation folder button to do this; the button text will change to Installation folder successfully removed.

Note

Installing extra languages

You may have noticed that we haven't used the Extra steps: install languages button that's displayed in the final installation screen. There is a large number of translations available for both the administrative interface of Joomla and the frontend (where fixed texts such as Read more are translated). It's possible to add extra languages immediately after installation. This can be useful if you've installed, for example, the English Joomla version and you want to continue using your own preferred language.

If you install Joomla and click on the Extra steps: install...

Über Autor(innen)

Tiggeler Eric :

Eric Tiggeler has authored several books on Joomla!, such as the highly successful Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide and Joomla! 3 Beginner's Guide, both by Packt Publishing. He has also written several Joomla! guides in Dutch. His books have received excellent reader reviews. He also writes tutorials for several computer magazines and Joomla! community websites. Over the last ten years, he has developed numerous websites, big and small, using Joomla!. He is fascinated by the Web as a powerful, creative, and ever-changing means of communication, as well as by the revolutionary software Joomla!, which enables anybody to create beautiful and user-friendly websites. On a daily basis, he works as a consultant and copywriter at a communication consultancy company affiliated to the Free University of Amsterdam. Over the last few years, he has written more than 20 books in Dutch on writing and communication. His passion lies in making complex things easy to understand. He is married, has two daughters, and lives and works in Hilversum, the Netherlands. On the Web, you'll find him at www.joomla.erictiggeler.nl(in Dutch) and www.joomm.net(in English).