Joomla: Installation of Version 1.5

I am currently working for a non-profit out of New York City. I am helping them develop a website that will assist students that are residence of NYC search and signup for volunteer opportunities. On account of budget, we decided to use Joomla for the engine of the site.

Joomla, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a Content Management System(CMS). It is deployable on any server running PHP and MySQL. It is a very robust CMS with default installation, but adds even more functionality using extensions. Extensions are components or plugins that are developed to add functionality to Joomla. Examples of extensions include; a forum, customer management, property listings, and etc. You can visit the Joomla website to see a full list of extensions.

For this client, we decided to use the Joomla CMS, but build our own extension to provide the functionality that we need.

So here is a step-by-step installation guide for installing Joomla, and a reflection of my experiences. We are using BlueHost.com as our web host, running PHP 5 & MySQL 5.

1. Download the Joomla 1.5 Package from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/.
2. Upload the zip file to your root using your control panel's file manager.
   
3. Extract the zip file to your root using your control panel's file manager.(If you are not installing the joomla site on your root, then extract to desired directory)
   
4. Navigate to your web site's root or directory where you extracted Joomla using your favorite browser. I used FireFox 2.0.
5. You will see the Joomla Web Installer. Select your language and click next.
6. Next you see the Pre-Install check. Verify that all settings are green, if not correct settings as recommended. With BlueHost, the default settings are perfect. Then click next.
   
7. View the GNU License then click next.
8. Enter in your database settings. If you have not created the database yet, navigate to your hosts control panel and create it. Don't forget to add a user to the database. On BlueHost, the hostname is localhost. When everything is entered correctly, click next.
   
9. Enter in your site name, admin email address and admin password. Click next.
10. Click Create Sample Data if you are new to Joomla. The sample data will give you an idea on how Joomla works. Click next.
    
11. Delete the installation folder. Then click site or admin to begin using your new Joomla site.

In my opinion, this was a hassle free install. There was no errors encountered, not confusing installation steps and all around simple to do.

I will post more as we configure and customize Joomla to meet the needs of this client.

Chris