Getting Started With Joomla 1.5 CMS

Joomla 1.5 has been the leading CMS (Content Management System) in its class for years. With the introduction of the new 1.5 branch, Joomla acclaimed its position as a leading PHP based CMS with its huge choice of templates, components and other addons. It is both easy to use for beginners and a very powerful website-building tools for advanced webmasters. With TMDHosting's Joomla 1.5 hosting package you will also receive a free domain name, a shared SSL certificate, as well as free Joomla 1.5 installation by our experienced professionals.

This Joomla 1.5 tutorial is devised in a few sections:

• Joomla 1.5 Installation via Fantastico Tool • Joomla 1.5 Manual Installation • How to administrate Joomla 1.5 • Changing the default template of Joomla 1.5 • How to create articles in Joomla • How to create a Contact us page • How to Link Articles to the Menu • Setting a page to be default • How to create a Poll in Joomla 1.5 • Joomla 1.5 Search Engine Optimization • Joomla 1.5 Performance Optimization • Upgrading from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5

TMDHosting offers great Joomla 1.5 Services

• Joomla FREE Installation • Joomla 1.5 FREE Templates • Joomla 1.5 Tutorial • Joomla 1.5 Extensions • Joomla FREE Upgrade

Joomla 1.5 Installation via Fantastico Tool

Joomla 1.5 FREE Installation

You can find a fast and free installation of Joomla 1.5 with the TMDHosting Joomla hosting package. The Joomla 1.5 installation can be requested from the client's area -> Get Support section -> Submit Support Ticket.

TMDHosting offers a great automated installer, which can be used with cPanel.

To perform an automated Joomla 1.5 installation you should open your cPanel and scroll down to the Fantastico De Luxe icon:

In Fantastico, you will find Joomla 1.5 in the Content Management section.

When in the Joomla 1.5 section, select the New Installation link as shown in this picture:

On the new page, you will need to fill in some details:

Install on domain: This will automatically show your domain name

Install in directory: If this is your first Joomla installation, it is best to leave this blank

Admin access data: here are your administrative username and password for Joomla

Base configuration: your e-mail address, name and the name of your site.

Then, click on the install button, which will take you to the next step:

Here a new screen informs you of a successful installation. Click the button and proceed to the next step:

This is very important. This page provides you with the URL to your new website and the administrative area for it. Bookmark them.

Joomla 1.5 Manual Installation

Joomla 1.5 FREE Installation

You can find a fast and free installation of Joomla 1.5 with the TMDHosting Joomla hosting package. The Joomla 1.5 installation can be requested from the client's area -> Get Support section -> Submit Support Ticket.

Joomla 1.5 Installation

For installing Joomla 1.5 the system requirements are:

-- Apache 1.x or 2.x -- PHP 4.3 or above -- MySQL 3.23 or above -- You can use the Apache2Triad package for local tests on your computer.

Please follow the chapters below when you are ready for the installation:

Chapter 1. Create a Mysql database and add an user to it. You can do this easily with cPanel by following this video tutorial: Add MySQL Database. Refer to the MySQL manual on creating databases and adding users to it in case you are not using Cpanel.

Chapter 2. Next, create a folder called upload on your local computer.

Chapter 3. Go to Joomla download page. (novoto url e http://www.joomla.org/download.html) You should download the .zip file to the upload folder and extract it there.

Chapter 4. You have to upload all the content from upload to the directory on the server where Joomla 1.5 will be installed. For this purpose we recommend using FTP and you will be guided through the necessary steps by the FTP tutorial.

Chapter 5. The URL of the newly uploaded Joomla files should be opened. This will be either http://your_domain_name.com or a subdirectory such as http://your_domain_name.com/example.

Chapter 6. You will be redirected to the Joomla installation page:

You can choose the Language for the installation on the first page. ! The language you have selected is valid only for the process of installation. When you install Joomla, it will be in English. To follow the next steps of the tutorial easier, we recommend selecting "English".

Chapter 7. Next, a pre-installation check about the system environment is being performed by Joomla. Functional and security problems may be caused later if it fails to meet a requirement or recommendation. All Joomla 1.5 requirements met on a standard TMDHosting account can be seen in this screenshot:

Chapter 8. When you are sure that all requirements are met, click on [Next] from the top right menu.

Chapter 9. Next, you have to accept Joomla's license and click on [Next] to continue.

Chapter 10. The following page asks about the MySQL details for the new installation of Joomla 1.5. If you have difficulties with providing the necessary information, there are hints and explanations about all fields:

Chapter 11. Next screen shows the FTP configuration. Here you should fill in your FTP login details (the ones you used earlier to upload the Joomla files). It is also recommended to use the autodetect function, so the installer can automatically find your FTP root path:

Chapter 12. The page that appears helps you with completing the final Joomla 1.5 settings specifying your email and the admin password. To save the progress click on [Next].

Now, as an example, we are not using the option Install Sample Data because of the confusion that will be caused and because it will require time to remove all the data populated later.

Chapter 13. You receive a confirmation that Joomla has been successfully installed in the last page of the installation wizard. You must delete the installation directory before being able to access your new Joomla 1.5. Use FTP for this purpose as it is described in Chapter 3.

Joomla 1.5 Login as Administrator

After Joomla 1.5 installation we start adding our content. We assume in the example that the domain we use is your_domain_name.com and Joomla's admin panel is at:

http://your_domain_name.com/administrator

When following the tutorial, make sure you change your_domain_name.com to the real domain name of your website. Your login information must be entered in the Joomla! This is the Administration Login screen:

How to change the default Joomla 1.5 template

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• Visit our Joomla 1.5 Templates Collection

The option for easily changing Joomla's templates is one of its great features. Download the template you like to your local computer when you find it. Next, log in your Joomla admin panel (your_domain_name.com/administrator - in our case) and then go to Extensions -> Install/Uninstall:

To find the file you have just downloaded you have to use [Browse.] in a box "Upload Package File".

Click on [Upload File & Install] when you find the file. When you have installed your new template, you have to apply it. In Joomla's admin panel go to Extensions -> Template manager:

Check the radio button next to your new template and from the top right menu choose "Default". Now, there are just 2 easy steps to follow and your site is re-designed and it has a brand new look.

How to create articles in Joomla 1.5

If Joomla has been installed through Fantastico or from source with the sample data, a few articles will have been created and published already.

If you want to learn some good practices, you can have a look at how they are written and organized. Go to Content, Article Manager from the top admin menu if you want to see them.

There are many articles that have been listed in the form of links there. To enter the Edit mode for an article, you should click on its link. To exit it, after exploring an article, click on the Close button. All the changes you have made will be discarded.

To avoid any confusion before building our first article, we clean all the default ones; go back to Content, Article Manager from the top admin menu.

Then check the first radio button in the column to select all the articles and click on the button [Trash] from the top admin menu.

We create our first article "About us". Click on the button [New] from the top admin menu.

Next, the following changes should be made:

Title: About us Alias: (blank/leave it empty) Section: Uncategorized Category: UncategorizedPublished: Yes (It shows to the visitors if it is not published. It remains only as a draft.) Frontpage: Yes (The first page of our site appears.)

The information about our company will be specified in the main text field Then, we would like to place our company's logo inline, so we click on the image icon at the bottom of the page:

We click first on the link [Upload file] in the prompted window because our logo is not uploaded yet. But to find the logo you have to browse your local computer. Click on [Start Upload] to upload it when you have found it.

There will be an acknowledgement that you have successfully uploaded the file. And now along with the default Joomla images you can find it in the upper part of the window.

To select it click on logo.png (or the name of your logo whatever it is) and then on [Insert] to insert it in the article. You can easily adjust the logo in the article by dragging it to the position you'd like to have it. Finally, save the article by clicking on the button [Save].

Then the "Our services" page will be added. Follow the same steps as before: go to Content -> Article manager from the top administrator's menu. Next click on [New]. Again set the same Category and Section for our page: "Uncategorized".

Here it is what we offer and a description of our services. Note how many features the default Joomla text editor has. Its menu has standard editor design and is very intuitive. After we have finished the editing successfully, click on the button [Save] from the top-right panel to save the page.

How to Link Articles to the Menu

Now, to make sure that our pages can be accessed, so we will link them in the site menu. From the admin panel, go to Menus -> Main Menu.

Firstly, we delete all the default links. To select all links, check the first radio button and click on Trash. (You can safely disregard the warning that will appear "You cannot trash the default menu item") We add links to our articles and the "Contact us" page. For this purpose click on [New] from the top-left menu. Now select the item type. It will be Internal link - Article - Article Layout in our case:

Next, the information about the links has to be filled in. The link will be called "About us". Then click on [Select] from the left Parameters - Basic:

Then a box with all our pages appears and we click on "About us":

Finally, by clicking on [Save] from the top-right menu we save the link.

Setting a page to be default

As we are still in the Menu Item Manager, set the page "About us" as default. We check its radio button for this purpose and click on [Default] from the top menu:

Now, as an option we can remove the system placed link "Home" as well, because it will not be necessary.

Next, we will add a link to our other page "Our services". In the Menu Item Manager click on [New] from the top menu and select Article -> Article Layout.

Finally, fill the information about the link "Our services" and select it from Parameters - Basic. Click on link "Our services" from the box, then click on [Save] and this will finalize the operation.

How to create a Contact us page in Joomla 1.5

Next a "Contact us" page with an online mail form will be added. First, to create a new Contacts Category, so go to Components -> Contacts -> Categories:

Click on [New]. Because of our plan to have a simple Contact Us page, we will create one single category called "General" and click on [Save]. As you understand, here we use categories again for better content organization. Then, go to Components -> Contacts -> Contacts:

We click on [New] and fill in our information. Please, make sure the email you entered is valid because you will receive all the mails sent to it via this contact form.

From the right box "Contacts parameters" check the button Hide next to "Name" to avoid having your contact's name duplicated later. The rest of the default options will be left unchanged to suit our basic needs, click on [Save] from the top-right menu.

How to create a Poll in Joomla 1.5

Now to find out what are visitor's opinions toward our new site, we will place a poll. To do this, we choose Components -> Polls from the top menu:

We will click on [New] from the top-right menu to create a new poll. We will call the poll: "Your opinion about our site". We will list all the options on the poll in the left menu: "Excellent/Terrific", "Satisfactory", "Dull/Awful".

We click on [Save] from the top right menu to save the new poll. Now the poll has to be made public, in other words, to be published. For this purpose we click on Extensions -> Module Manager from the top menu:

From the top-right menu we choose [New] and find Poll from the options listed, and check it.

Then we click on "Next" from the top-right menu. The following changes are going to be made:

1. Set the title to: "Your opinion about our site" 2. Set "Show title" to "No". 3. We select our poll called ""Your opinion about our site" from the right box, Module Parameters, Poll

Finally, from the top right menu we click on [Save] and we will have a poll on our frontpage.

Optimization of search engine

If you want to have the website better indexed by the search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, the pages must have meaningful names. For this purpose we will use Joomla's SEO feature.

You will have to enable mod_rewrite if you want to use SEO for your Joomla installation. Mod_rewrite by default enabled on all TMDHosting servers and, you will have to rename the htaccess.txt file in your Joomla installation directory to .htaccess in order to enable the rewrite rules.

Next, you should enable Joomla's SEO functionality from Site -> Global configuration in the admin panel.

You can change the Metadata Settings about your site along with other useful information in this page. Although we are interested rather in the left part - "SEO Settings", we will change to Yes "Search Engine Friendly URLs".

Then we will click on [Save] from the top right menu. This will change the link to the "About us" page, as in the example

from:

http://your_domain_name.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=2

to

http://your_domain_name.com/index.php/About us

Joomla Optimization and Settings

Here you are some tips for Joomla, which are the answers to some ordinary/usual/common questions, or how to:

• Remove the author / date posted from articles • Change the domain name for your Joomla 1.5 • Optimize Joomla 1.5 Speed • User Registrations

Removing the author/date posted

Go to Content - Article Manager from Joomla's admin panel:

Click on "Preferences" from the top-right menu.

You can see a box with all configurable options including author / date posted. Any of the options you'd like to disable can be simply set to "Hide".

Changing the domain name for your Joomla

Unlike the previous Joomla versions, which required a manual re-configuration when changing the domain name of your site, Joomla 1.5 does NOT require such a change; it adapts to your domain name automatically/dynamically.

Joomla 1.5 speeding up

Joomla may usually perform rather slowly in these cases:

Enabled extra features such as stats and polls;

Installed additional components, modules, plugins, themes;

Too many items on the pages. By good luck, there is an easy way to speed up Joomla�s performance by enabling its caching function.

You can do this from Joomla's admin panel Site -> Global Configuration.

Next, click on the link "System" under Global Configuration:

There you have to check "Yes" besides the Cache option in the box called "Cache Settings":

You do not have to change the rest options, but you can commit the change clicking on [Save] from the top right menu. !

You may be prevented from immediately seeing changes on your site by enabling the cache. In some cases you might have to wait for timing out the cache (15 minutes) before seeing the changes.

User registrations allowance in Joomla 1.5

User registration is allowed in Joomla 1.5 by default. Just enable the login form. From the admin panel go to Extensions -> Module Manager:

Then click on [New] from the top right menu and check the "Login" option:

To proceed, click on "Next" from the top-right menu. We will make only one change from the appearing options: Title: Login Finally, click on [Save] from the top menu to save the progress and there will be a login form on your site.

Upgrading from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5

FREE Joomla Upgrade (1.0 -> 1.5)

You can find a fast and free upgrade of your old Joomla 1.0 with the TMDHosting Joomla hosting package. The Joomla upgrade can be requested from the client's area -> Get Support section -> Submit Support Ticket and it will takes no more than 15 minutes!

We will show you how your Joomla 1.0.x can be upgraded to the stable Joomla 1.5 version.

!Note that we strongly recommend before proceeding with the migration process to backup your existing Joomla web site. Unlikely the normal Joomla upgrades, Joomla 1.0.x to 1.5 migration requires a little bit more tweaking.

Chapter 1: The Migrator component installation

The first step that we should follow is to install the Migrator component to our existing Joomla web site. You can download the Migrator component here. We are going to use the migrator1.1 archive for our tutorial.

Left-click on the migrator.zip link and save the archive on your PC.

The archive itself contains a Joomla component, which is actually taking care of the process of migration. Luckily, Joomla components installation is not a big deal. Go to your Joomla administrative control panel (http://www.your-domain.com/administrator) and log in:

When you are in, from the top navigation menu mouse over the tool Installers and select Components from the drop down menu:

You locate the migrator_rc6.tgz from your hard disk by clicking on [Upload Package File].

To confirm the installation, click on the button [Upload file & install]:

Press [Continue..] at the Upload Component - Success screen.

When the installation of the component is done, mouse over the tool Components available at the top Joomla menu and select Migrator:

Now, you are allowed by the component menu to migrate your current Joomla 1.0.x data to the Joomla 1.5 database format. With our tutorial you can only migrate a base Joomla web site and there are no third party extensions and components installed.

Thus, if you use such, make sure to imput their migration scripts by using the options 3rd Party Information and Add 3rd Party Migrators, which the Migrator component offers:

There should be migration scripts provided by their respective developers on the offical project sites for any additional modules / components / mambots.

Chapter 2: Migration SQL File creating

Select the last link that is available near the bottom of the Migrator component page - Create Migration SQL File to proceed with the database migration.

The following screen will be seen if the things go fluently and there are no errors reported during the SQL data export process: What you have to do next is to download the extracted SQL from your 1.0.x Joomla:

Now your SQL dump can be downloaded by clicking on the link Download available on the right section of the page and upload it into your Joomla. 1.5 installation.

Later, when you import this SQL file into your 1.5 installation, make sure to select Load Migration Script and use the prefix 'jos_' (by default).

Chapter 3: Performing a clean Joomla 1.5 installation

Next, a clean Joomla 1.5 installation will be performed. First, get the latest installation package from:

http://www.joomla.org/download.html

Now follow the steps for manual Joomla 1.5 installation and install a fresh copy of Joomla 1.5. Since this installation will be used for migration purposes, it is advised to perform the installation in a subfolder of public_html (like /new for example).

Therefore, you should upload the Joomla 1.5 installation files in /public_html/new

Go further with the installation till you reach

Step 4: Configuration:

Fill in your web site name, your admin e-mail and password details. !

Choose the option Load Migration Script because it is the key part here:

Fill the old table prefix _jos (or a different prefix that your previous Joomla has used) and do not change the encoding unless it is necessary and you are familiar with this option.

You have to select the previous Joomla 1.0.x migration dump from your Desktop by clicking on the button [Browse]. ! Make sure to tick the check box This script is a Joomla! 1.0 migration script. as well. Click on the button [Upload and execute] to confirm the progress.

The following screen should be seen when the data is imported:

Click on the button [Next] near the upper right corner. ! By using the File manager available in cPanel you completely remove the installation directory.

Now, you will see all the articles and data from the previous Joomla imported when you open the front end of your newly installed Joomla 1.5.