Wednesday, July 1, 2009
My first website using Joomla
Content Management Systems (CMS) are widely used for various applications. Thank to the open source community, there are plenty of open source CMSs available today. Recently, I thought of playing with CMS systems in my spare time. Among other open source CMS systems available, I became interested in Joomla, an award winning open source CMS. While reading the documents, tutorials and after setting up the systems in my local environment (windows vista), I realized that Joomla is a good solution to create dynamic websites rapidly with minimal of knowledge of web related technologies.
Joomla requires PHP, MySQL and Apache web server. There are several ways you can get Joomla working in your local environment.
XAMPP, a cross platform web server package consists of Apache web server, MySQL database, PHP interpreter and few other supporting tools, is an easier way of getting Joomla up and running in your system.
Having XAMPP as an option, I thought of installing relevant software (Apache web server, MySQL and PHP) separately to have a better understanding and control over software and subsequently get Joomla working on my local environment.
Following are the steps I have followed to get Joomla up and running on my local machine.
1. Install Apache web server. A good article on installing Apache web
server on Windows Vista can be found here.
2. Install MySQL. This is straight forward.
3. Install PHP. A good article on how to install and configure PHP to
work with Apache web server can be found here
Make sure necessary configurations have been done so that
above components work together.
4. Extract downloaded latest Joomla 1.5.x to htdocs folder in Apache
web server.
5. Install & configure Joomla. This is a good article explaining the
installation process of Joomla.
Having set up Joomla up and running, I spent couple of hours playing with Joomla. I as a beginner to Joomla, was able to build a mock website for my school by modifying and adding components to existing templates which have been packaged with Joomla installation within couple of hours (Though the web site in not in production yet). This made me realize, for a person who is familiar with Joomla (not necessarily be familiar with other web related technologies) may be able to create a website from the scratch within very short time.
So, why don’t you give a try with Joomla!!!
Labels: Apache, CMS, Joomla, MySQL, PHP
# posted by Amila Nilantha @ 11:49 
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