What Is a CMS?

As mentioned previously, a content management system (CMS) is a software system that enables you to create, edit, and different types of documents These documents can include data files, audio/video files, image files, and most other forms of web content A CMS not only helps manage all this content (without requiring any technical knowledge of [ [ ...]

What Is Joomla?

Joomla is one of the most powerful and popular open source CMSs available today It is a free, open source framework and content publishing system designed for quickly creating highly interactive multilingual web sites, online communities, blogs, and e-commerce applications It is a server-based application that maintains all the contents of the web site in [ [ ...]

Prerequisites to Installing Joomla on the Local Server

1. Web Request Life Cycle Before diving into the Joomla installation prerequisites, it’s important to have some background on the web request life cycle Web applications normally work in a request-response mode The user (usually called a client) sends a request for some information to the web server via a web browser The web server [ [ ...]

Installing XAMPP

As discussed, to develop any web sites with Joomla, you need a web server, a database, and the PHP language installed on your computer XAMPP, which is an Apache distribution developed by Kai “Oswald” Seidler and Kay Vogelgesang, contains Apache, MySQL, and PHP In fact, that’s what the AMP in XAMPP stands for: Apache, MySQL, [ [ ...]

Installing Joomla Locally

To install Joomla on a local server, you have to first download it from www.joomla.org/download.html. The latest Joomla version available for download at the time of this writing is Joomla3.4.1. The archive file that is downloaded is namedJoomla_3.4.1-Stable-Full_Package.zip. You have to unzip the Joomla ZIP file into a subfolder of the htdocs directory of XAMPP. [ [ ...]

Installing Joomla on a Remote Server

To install Joomla on a remote server, you have to do two things: Register a domain name Book a web space on a server If you do not already own a domain name, there are a great many services available on the Web that will enable you to register one. Here are a few: dreamhost.com/ [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: Key Terms

Before you get started, there are two important terms that will crop up repeatedly throughout this book, so it will be useful to define them now: front end and back end (see Figure 3-1). Front end refers to the web site; the part that’s accessed by users or visitors and that displays the content of [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: Elements of the Administrator Interface

As discussed in Chapter 1, a CMS is a computer software system for organizing and managing documents, including web content. Because Joomla is a CMS, it provides a Control Panel and tools for you to manage your web site and its contents, and this Control Panel can be accessed by using the Joomla Administrator interface. [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: Using the Category, Article, and Menu Managers

Before you begin creating a web site, here is a quick introduction to the Article, Category, and Menu Item Managers: Article Manager: Articles contain the actual information or content that you want your web site visitors to An article comprises text and may also include images and other multimedia content. Category Manager: To manage articles [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: Viewing the Contents

Now that you’ve performed all the steps to create the web site contents, it is time to see the result. Open the browser window pointing to your web site and refresh it, or just click the Preview button at the top right of the Menu Item Manager. On the front end, you’ll find that the [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: Other Control Panel Managers

There are a number of other managers in the Control Panel that haven’t been covered yet, including the Module Manager, the User Manager, Global Configuration, the Template Manager, and the Language Manager. They are described in the following sections. 1. Module Manager The Module Manager is a collection of several independent executable units in which [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: User Manager

The User Manager is used to manage users. A user might be a simple visitor who is registered at your web site, an employee of your organization, or even you. When you create users, you assign them to groups that decide the permissions assigned to them (e.g., whether they can edit or add new articles [ [ ...]

Your First Steps in Joomla: Global Configuration

Global Configuration is used for specifying certain configuration settings that can have a deep impact on the overall appearance and operation of your web site. Most of the settings listed in Global Configuration are automatically configured during the installation and that you can modify per your requirements. For example, you can change the Location Settings [ [ ...]

Working with Media Manager in Joomla

The Media Manager is a component that enables you to manage all the images used in your web site in articles, menus, categories, sections, and so on. Using this manager, new images can be uploaded, existing images can be edited, and new directories can be created. All the images in your web site are stored [ [ ...]

Displaying a Client’s Banners in Joomla

To display your client’s banners on your web site, take the following steps: Upload the client’s banner image file to the banners folder of the Media Manager. Create a category for the banner using the Banner Category Manager. Create a banner client using the Banner Client Manager. Create a banner using the Banner Manager. Use [ [ ...]

Displaying the Finished Product in Joomla

After entering the module information as discussed previously, save the banner module by clicking the Save & Close icon in the toolbar. You can now see the banner of your client on your Joomla web site. Open the browser window that displays your web site and click the Refresh button. Initially, the banner will not [ [ ...]

What Is a Contact?

The main agenda in this chapter is to create a contact form on your web site, which a visitor can fill in and click a button to send to you. On a standard web site, the main contact will be one of the following: The concerned person of the organization (in smaller organizations). The department [ [ ...]

Working with the User Manager in Joomla

The User Manager provides tools for creating, viewing, editing, and deleting users for your web site. Users play a major role in managing contents of a web site. You can perform several functions with the User Manager, including these: Seeing whether a user is logged in or not Blocking a user from logging into your [ [ ...]

Configuring Settings of a New User in Joomla

Now that you know what kinds of groups can be assigned to a user, let’s create a user for your web site. To do this, you have to open the User Manager by opening a browser window and entering your Administrator interface address (http://localhost/joomlasite/administrator). From the menu bar, select Users ➤ User Manager. You’ll see a screen like that shown [ [ ...]

Creating a Contacts Category in Joomla

Next, you need to link your new user, sanjay, to a contact. However, before creating a contact, you need to specify the category (or categories) for the contact. Let’s begin by creating a Contacts category, which simply categorizes different contacts. For example, you can create a category by the name of Suppliers so that all [ [ ...]