Joomla

Introduction
Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Links

 * Joomla
 * Joomla Documentation
 * Joomla Extensions

System Requirements

 * Web server like Apache 1.3 or above
 * PHP4 (4.3.10 or above) or PHP5
 * MySQL 3.23 or above or PostgreSQL

Installation
1) Extract the zipped joomla source code to a directory.

2) Open the local directory where you uncompressed the Joomla! Core distribution directories and files and copy the file configuration.php-dist.

3) Rename the copied file to configuration.php, and open it in your code editor.

4) The following are the important variables to be amended before the software will operate properly:

var $sitename = 'your Web site name'; var $dbtype = 'mysql'; var $host = 'localhost'; var $user = 'your database username'; var $password = 'your database password'; var $db = 'database name'; var $dbprefix = 'jos_'; var $mailfrom = 'your e-mail address'; var $fromname = 'your Web site name for example';

5) Create the database as described below.

6) Configure apache as described below.

7) Access the joomla website and follow the browser installation instructions. They are described also here.

Database creation
Create the database and user. For example: $ mysql -u root -p mysql>create database joomla; mysql>GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON joomla.* TO 'myuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword'; mysql>FLUSH PRIVILEGES; mysql>quit

Take note of the username, password, database name and hostname as you create the database.

Apache Configuration
Edit the file and insert the snippets:  Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all  Alias /joomla/ "/var/www/joomla/" Alias /joomla "/var/www/joomla"
 * 1) Joomla
 * 1) Joomla
 * 1) Joomla
 * 1) Joomla

Restart the server in order the configuration can take effect: $ apachectl restart

How to change your website icon

 * First, you have to create a logo for your site; a very tiny logo to be specific. The size of the logo should be 16x16 pixels and it should be saved as a Windows icon file (logo.ico for example).


 * Finally, replace the file located at the root of your template directory.

If it does not work, you can try to add the following html command between the block  of the file located at the root of your template: 

Changing the Front Page
The default front page is associated to the menu item Home. This link is very important to layout the main page of your website. Therefore, you can create a new menu item of the type Frontpage Layout or you can configure the layout through the parameters.

How to change the window title of the browser
The system parameter Page Title of your article (or module, etc.) informs Joomla to display this text as window title of the client browser.

How to change default parameter of articles
You can change the global configuration of all Articles, clicking on the button "Parameters" under the menu option "Content->Articles".

How to include modules in articles
A solution for this problem is well-described here.

How to add source code into articles or content
Use Jumi to do that. Many example are provided at [jumi.vedeme.cz].

For example, to add a google gadget into your page, create a php file with the following content:

 


 * Copy the php file to a directory in Joomla.
 * Create a new module of type Jumi.
 * Set the parameters to use the created php file.
 * Enable the module to appear in the right position of your website.

How to customize the offline page?
Edit and change the file.

New PHP file
Remember thaat every PHP file must contain the following code due to security issues:



Joomla is not sending E-mails
If you are working locally, you can select the option to send e-mails through SMTP instead PHP-mailer. Go to the configuration page of Joomla and change this property.

How to recover the password in Joomla
If you want to recover a password of a Joomla user, then you have to log in the mysql database and execute the following command: update jos_users set password='21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3' where username='admin';

The example above reset the admin password for 'admin'.

Joomla is showing crazy characters
There are two issues concerning the problem that Joomla shows wrong characters, specially if you are using accents or non-english characters.

1) Problem with the database import

If you imported a database, try to import it again using the charset UTF-8 or the right charset of your choose. Example:

mysql -u root -p --default-character-set=utf8 db_joomla < db_joomla.sql

2) Wrong charset of an extension

If you installed an extension that uses a different charset than installed in your Joomla, only the pages of this component, module or plugin will be exhibited wrongly. Try to rewrite the files of the extension directory using the right charset, especially the files under the ../language directory. Use tools like Notepad++ to encode the files again.

Loading modules into the article content
If you want to load a module position in the middle of your text, you can use write the following command in the article text:

{loadposition user8}

It will load and insert the content of all modules that are associated to the position user8 into the article content.

Installer not working
If you are using a local (or remote?) version of Joomla, you need to set the correct temp (temporary) path, otherwise you can receive the error below during the installation of some Joomla component :

JFolder::files: Path does not point to a valid folder or the folder has been deleted

If you are using windows, set it to for example. If you are using linux set the temp path to

Wrong char coding in Acajoom
If your website is showing wrong characters only for pages that use Acajoom like (un)subscription confirmation, archive, changes, you have to certify that the files under are encoded using your website encoding char set. Normally it uses UTF-8 without BOM. See also the link Joomla is Showing Crazy Characters.

If it does not work, open each language file in the directory above and remove all the words compa::encodeutf from the file. Example:

define('_ACA_CONTENT', compa::encodeutf('Conteúdo'));

must be replace by

define('_ACA_CONTENT', ('Conteúdo'));

How to install, configure and solve problems related to Joomla

