Chapter 2. Quick Start
Now that you have a brief overview of Joomla and the Joomla Project, it’s time to jump in and get your feet wet. In this chapter, you’ll learn what you need in order to get your Joomla website up and running quickly. We’ll guide you through the options in the installation process to help avoid confusion.
Quick Install
The quickest way to get up and running is to have a web-hosting account already set up—and that’s a requirement for this Quick Start chapter (or else it wouldn’t be a “quick start,” right?). If you’re an intermediate user and want to set up Joomla on your local computer, see Appendix A for details on how to do this. It also prevents the need to purchase a domain and set up a hosting server.
If you don’t have a hosting provider, they’re pretty easy to find online—practically a dime a dozen. But be forewarned that when it comes to hosting providers, you often get what you pay for. So do a little research and choose carefully. For the best results, ensure that your hosting provider offers support for PHP 5.2+ and MySQL 4.1+. You’ll also need to register a domain—most web-hosting providers can assist you with this when you set up a web-hosting account.
Most shared hosting providers offer a control panel called cPanel. Since our goal right now is to get your Joomla website up quickly, this chapter will only outline installing Joomla using the Fantastico installer that comes with cPanel. Before purchasing a new hosting service, ensure that cPanel is available ...
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