Up and Running with Joomla

Section 1: Installation, Setup, and Initial Configuration

In 1997, eBay was barely two years old, and Google was primarily a research project for a couple of college students. How times have changed! Today’s Internet boasts online applications, services, and a plethora of tools, assets, and information that can help anyone do pretty much anything. One area that has seen lots of attention is web site creation.

It would be easy to recount history on how initial web site creation tools were created, and how they forked and evolved into development and Content Management System (CMS) platforms, but we won’t do that here. Instead, in this Short Cut, we’ll discuss a platform called Joomla that can be used to power very sophisticated web sites, and quickly.

In the first section, you’ll install the prerequisites and Joomla, and then perform the initial setup and configuration. With Joomla up and running, you’ll begin setting up your Sections and Categories, which will be used to classify your content. You’ll be exposed to Templates and Site Modules, as these two features help lay the foundation for what is possible in terms of site functionality.

So, let’s get started.

Satisfying the Prerequisites

Before we can get started working with Joomla directly, make sure your computer has the software and components required to run the system. We could spend numerous pages talking you through the individual installation steps for each of the prerequisites, but in the interest of time, we are going to ...