Joomla, CMS for beginners!

Being the master of your own domain is always a plus, especially when speaking in a litteral sense. In web design, it is always good to be versatile. This means being able to design in new ways, try new system setups, experiment with different content management, and plugins, for those who like things done for them.

Today, we'll be dealing with Joomla, one of the strongest and fastest growing free Content Management Systems available in this part of our galaxy. Joomla's "theory" can be daunting enough for the average user, so to make it much less painful, I've devised a simplified explanation of Joomla, as well as a few snapshots, to show how it works.

What is Joomla?
Joomla is generally a group of webpages (to help you 'install' it [configure for your system]), scripts (to manage the content on your page) and databases (to store information for your page). Your first step, is to download the latest copy of Joomla, and extract it to a folder called Joomla.

How can it be used?
If you do not have webspace (ie, godaddy, www.yoursite.com), you can actually setup your home computer as a server. THIS IS EASIER THEN IT SOUNDS. Google xampp, it has all the programs you'll need, preconfigured! Download this, install it, and navigate to [XAMPP/htdocs.] folder, here you may drag the folder you created earlier, called 'Joomla'. XAMPP will act as a host for your website, like a virtual .com, except instead of a domain name, you are using your assigned ip address. Note: Other users can still access it using your external IP! Click here to find out your IP!.

Setting it all up
This tutorial is about Joomla, check back for a XAMPP tutorial soon. Once you have the folders in the correct places (Refer to picture). To configure Joomla, (which they call 'Install'), open up a browser window, and type http://localhost/Joomla/. This will automatically start your configuration! (Note: if yours is in webalizer, you must insert use path 'http://localhost/webalizer/' to access your joomla installation)

After install

After install, the onscreen instructions will tell you to delete the installation folder. THIS IS NOT THE JOOMLA FOLDER! There is a folder inside Joomla, called Installation, delete that folder. This will stop Joomla from opening the install everytime that directory is navigated to. Instead, the page which was chosen during installation will. (Sample webpage, or chosen template)