Up and Running with Joomla, 2nd Edition

Additional Configuration Settings

If you opened up the configuration.php file you saw a number of settings other than the few we listed. Now, if you access the Joomla Administrator console and click on the Global Configuration icon, you will be taken to the tabs that allow you to control various aspects of your configuration. Specifically, it allows you to control the following:

• Site: where you can take the site offline for maintenance, set the site's name (displayed in the <title> HTML element), and control other aspects, such as site meta data and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) settings.

• System: provides control over aspects such as enabling web services, controlling user registration, media settings as well as debug, cache, and session settings.

• Server: has core server settings, which include control over page compression, error reporting, locale, FTP, database, and email.

Although this list of options are easy to follow if you have prior experience with a CMS, it becomes very easy to be overwhelmed about what settings you need to care about which ones you don't if you are a newbie. The next couple of sections will help demystify these settings.

Important Site-Wide Options

When we are setting up an instance of Joomla for a client or our own needs, there are several changes we always make or at least consider making. We have compiled these into Table 1 to help give you quick access to some of our favorites.

Table 1. Important site-wide options

Tab	Setting	Comments
Site	Site Name	This setting ...