Joomla Tutorials: Introduction to Joomla and Installation Instructions

Joomla is a content management system that allows people with very little or no PHP experience or knowledge to construct professional looking and useful websites. These websites draw information from a SQL database, which means information is stored and pulled into the site for display to viewers.

This allows Joomla websites to display and/or utilize events calendars, directories, user profiles, email forms, forum boards and more by using components and modules. The base code of Joomla is already written and the code for these components or modules is also already written.

Joomla is an open source project, which means that there are people with coding experience all over the world working to make Joomla and the add ons better and more efficient or user friendly.

I began using Joomla with no previous HTML, PHP or SQL experience and had a working website up within a week. It took long hours every night during that week to figure out how to make all the changes I wanted to, but I did it. There are forums available on the official Joomla web site as well as tons of other web sites that offer add ons, tutorials, templates and other Joomla related items. There are a lot of commercial items (meaning you pay for them) but if you look long enough, chances are there is something similar available free of charge.

In order to have a Joomla web site, you will need the proper type of web hosting. Your web host must offer Apache, PHP, and MYSQL. Also, the installation is much easier if your web host offers Cpanel and if Fantastico is available on the Cpanel.

The most reliable and cheapest web host I have found that offers all you need is www.siteground.com, although if you do a search engine search for "joomla web hosting" you'll find an array of hosting providers.www.yoursitename.com/cpanel

How to Install Joomla on your site, using Fantastico:

1. Log in to the control panel of your hosting account. This is usually done by logging into the website of your web host or by visiting

   
   

2. In your control panel, go to the option for prewritten scripts or if it is listed on the home page of your control panel, click "Fantastico"
3. Click "Joomla" in the list of available scripts
4. On the right, click "New installation"
5. It will ask for a directory name. If you want the Joomla web site to be at
6. You will need to fill in your user name and password. These will be used to access the administration area of your Joomla web site.
7. Change the email address to the email address you receive email at
8. Fill in the name of the site - this will show up in the bar across the top of viewer's browsers.
9. Click next until the installation is complete

   Access your site atwww.yoursitename.com, leave that field blank to install it in your root directory. If you want it at www.yoursitename.com/main you would put "main" in that field www.yoursitename.com or www.yoursitename.com/main or whatever you named the directory. Access your administration area by logging in with your user name and password at www.yoursitename.com/administrator.