Install and Test Joomla! - 1.5RC2 on Windows

Sep 11, 2007 15:29 GMT  ·  By

There are many PHP open source content management systems available to public. Joomla! seems to be a powerful content manager since it is nominated again, for the second time as a contest finalist for the 2007 PacktPub Open Source CMS Awards. It is used for the development of both common websites and complex e-commerce portals. You can install Joomla! 1.5RC2, which is the latest development version (30.08.2007) if you have an Apache web server with PHP and MySQL.You will need a single MySQL database. First, download Joomla! and unzip the file to a directory named joomla.

You can use the free 7-Zip application for the zip archive management. If you want to test Joomla! on your computer with Windows operating system, you can install XAMPP, which contains all of them. If you do not have installed XAMPP application with Apache and MySQL as Windows services, then start XAMPP and start Apache and MySQL. Open a browser window and type in the address bar: http://localhost/phpmyadmin. An instance of phpMyAdmin application will appear. Then in the "Create new database" field type joomla and hit the create button. You just have created an empty MySQL database that will be used by your Joomla installation. Locate the XAMPP directory and inside it find the directory named htdocs.

In the htdocs directory you must copy or move the directory joomla created earlier and resulted from the unzipping of the Joomla! distribution archive. Open a new browser window and type http://localhost/joomla.You will be prompted to select an installation language for your Joomla! content management system. After you have selected the desired language press the next button. The next screen will display a report concerning your system requirements. If you use the default Apache configuration, as it is provided by the XAMPP, your system has all minimum requirements needed by Joomla! installation (all items are coloured in green). Again, press the next button. On this screen you must agree to the GNU General Public License in order to use the Joomla! application.

You agree with it by pressing the next button. On the next screen you must define the database settings. Database type: MySQL, Host Name: localhost, User Name: root, Password - live this field empty if you have not set up a password for MySQL database access, Database Name: joomla. On the next screen you can live the FTP configuration for later and press again the next button. On the main configuration, give a generic name for your test website, an email for testing purposes, such as [email protected] and the Admin password.

Press the "Install Sample Data" Button in order to have sample data installed on your website for testing. At the end you must delete the installation directory from the joomla directory in htdocs folder. And now you are ready to test the Joomla! CMS using the default installation. You should try to discover from the administration panel the settings you can change and how to customize this default Joomla! installation.