The Art of eMarketing

Like I said in my WordPress how to, I am not programmer literate nor do I understand php and how most things work on the web. However I found Joomla really easy to install and work with. If WordPress were not so easy to use for blogs, I would probably be using Joomla. Joomla has a really good community that creates extensions that anyone can use. They have actually come up with some really good ones, if you want to see them to get an idea of what to expect just head over to Joomla.com

Step 1 – Download Joomla and Unzip it
Go to Joomla.com and you should see a link in the middle of the webpage that says “download”. Click that link and save the file to your computer. Once the file is downloaded you need to unzip it. You can do this with a program like WinZip or winrar. You can extract the contents to anywhere on your computer.

Step 2 – Set up MySql Database
Login to your cpanel and go to “MySQL databases”. Look for the button “add db” and type in the form the name of the new database (ex: joomladatabase). Press “add db” button. The new database is created. Now, let’s add a user to that database. Look for “Add User” button. Type your username and a password and press “add User”. The next step is to add the user to our database. Below databases are 2 dropdown spots where you see a user and a database. Select your new user and database. Below select the desired privileges and press “Adduser to DB”. Make sure you save this information because it will be used again in a later step.

Step 3 – Upload Joomla to Your WebServer
You can either log in to your cpanel and access a file manager or connect to your webserver through an ftp client. I use Filezilla (it’s free) to connect to my server and upload files, but you can use whatever you want. Once connected you need to take that folder you extracted in step 2 and upload it to your server. In filezilla this is as simple as clicking and dragging the file to your server (if you are connected).

Step 4 – Joomla Setup
Open up your web browser and go to your webpage you just uploaded to. Once there you should see a screen that looks like this. The screen will have 3 sections: The first checks that your system is able to run Joomla, the second part is some PHP settings and the third part checks several file and directory permissions. All parts must be like our image. If the first 2 are not the same ask your web hosting provider about them and maybe they will make corrections. The 3rd part must be modified by you. This can be done with your ftp client. You must give the directory permissions (CHMOD) so the files to be writeable. If you need to CHMOD all you need to do is open your ftp client, log in to your server and right click your Joomla folder. You will see something like “file attributes” click that. Once open type “777” where the number is and select “recurse to sub directories and files”. This will make it possible for Joomla to work. Now go back to your domain and it should be working.

Step 5 – Configure Joomla
You have to fill in the database configuration info (this is the same info you received in Step 2 when you made the Sql database). Your hostname is usually “localhost”. We created before the database, username and password. Now, all you have to do is to fill the spaces with the name of the database, username and password. The MySQL Table prefix can be left “jos_” Click “Next”. A pop-up window will appear to ask you if all info is correct. Make sure it is all correct and then go ahead and click “ok”. On the next window all you need to do is type in your site name. And then click “next”.

Step 6 – Final Step
Just keep filling in the information. You will then get to a screen that provides you with a username: admin and a password. Write down that password because you will need it to login to Joomla. You can change your password and username at a later time, so don’t worry.

Now click next, if you try to login to your webpage immediately, Joomla will remind you to delete your installation directory. All you need to do is log into your Web server with the ftp client and delete the folder. Now you should be able to log, and use Joomla.