How to Set Up a Joomla Blog

When it comes to setting up your own blog,WordPress currently rules the roost. Easy to set up and easy to use and with a million and one templates out there for you to choose from, WordPress offers blogging and website creation without the need for a single word of html code.

However, with new technologies arriving every day and new demands being placed on the old ‘wysiwyg’ editor, it seems that bloggers are beginning to look for something a bit more in-depth and
a bit more robust. Step up Joomla, one of the more popular and robust CMS systems on the market that is growing in popularity. In this article, we’ll explore how to manually upload Joomla and launch your

first Joomla site.

The first thing to note is that many hosting companies now offer one click installs of Joomla alongside WordPress, and if you have this option available, it is an easier route. On the other hand, it is sometimes better to do things manually yourself, as it will help you build a better understanding of the Joomla CMS. Here, we will be performing a conventional installation ourselves which involves copying the Joomla zip file to our hosting account, creating a database and then running the installation.

The first thing to note is that many hosting companies now offer one click installs of Joomla alongside WordPress, and if you have this option available, it is an easier route. On the other hand, it is sometimes better to do things manually yourself, as it will help you build a better understanding of the Joomla CMS. Here, we will be performing a conventional installation ourselves which involves copying the Joomla zip file to our hosting account, creating a database and then running the installation.

Step One – Downloading Joomla

In order to get Joomla running on your site, all you need to do is follow a few simple steps. The first thing to do is download Joomla to your computer. For the latest version (currently 1.6), go towww.joomla.org and click on download to get the zip file.

Step Two – Uploading to your host

Once you’ve got the file and unzipped it, it is now time to upload the contents of the file to your webserver. You can do this using any FTP client (I use cyberduck). In order to make sure the installation is successful, you should first check that your server is running Apache version 1.3 (or higher) as well as MySQL v3.23 and PHP v4.3.10.

Step Three – Setting Up a Database

In order for the installation to work properly, we need to first set up a database that can hold all the data that Joomla will use to operate. In this article, we will use phpMyAdmin for the setting up and management of our database. In phpMyAdmin, we simply set up a new database from the dashboard area and then set one privileged user for that database.

Step Four – Beginning the Installation

As with WordPress installations, you can choose whether to install your Joomla blog into the root directory of the server (and therefore have the address www.yourdomain.com) or you can add it to the root domain (and have the address www.yourdomain.com/joomlablog).

Whichever path you have taken, go to that address and open the index.php file to begin installing Joomla. Choose the language of your installation (English in this case) and click next. Joomla will then check whether the server you are using contains all the necessary system requirements and if there is anything missing from your server, will tell you what you need to do to make it right.

Once this is all done, you will be redirected to the standard GNU licence for Joomla. Click next to then connect to your database.

Step Five – Connecting the Database

As mentioned above, Joomla will need a database to hold all its data. Here, we will simply select MySQL from the options given and will leave this named ‘localhost’ for the Host Name. Give the database a password and username and a database name, then click next so that you can connect to the database.

Step Six – Finish the Installation

Finally, fill in all the details required such as the name of the site and the details of the blog administrator. On the next page, remove the installation folder. And that’s it, you’ve now got your first Joomla site up and running.

Joomla as a Blog

If you intend to use Joomla as a blog, you’ll need to do some reading up on how to organize it. To get started though, go to Content>Category Manager>Add New Category and create a category called Blog. This will be the section that you write your blog in.

After this, you’ll need to define the categories of your blog and then create a menu and menu links for navigating around the blog, all of which is very simple to do and there are plenty of instructions in the template that you have just set up. For those people coming to Joomla from WordPress, it will feel different at first, but the site template comes with so many links to tutorials and forums where you can find answers to all your questions that very quickly you’ll be a Joomla master!