How is Joomla organized ?

Joomla is simple , so it's made for simple website to make them fast .
When you login to your Backend ( Administration panel , http://localhost/joomla/administrator ) , you will find several menus and several buttons . To know what to do we should know how Joomla organize your website .

Concerning the content ( the articles ) , Joomla divides your website into sections , and sections into categories , and finally categories contain articles .

Obviously , you can not use joomla if you website tree can go more than 3 levels ( sections->category->articles ) , but you can manage by making links between categories . Note if you find yourself making a lot of links between categories , then know you shouldn't use Joomla from the beginning .

To edit your content , the home page of your Backend show some big buttons , add article , Article manager , Sections Manager , Category Manager. You also should see in the top menu , a menu item called content , and when you hover with your mouse , you will find all your content options , you can access them from any page you are in the Backend .

Click on Section Manager , if you have installed the sample data during installation , you will see Joomla default sections ( About Joomla! , News , FAQs ) . When you click on one of them , you will be able to edit the title , description , description image . Also you can select one of them and delete it , but first you should have deleted or moved all categories contained in the section .

To make a new Section , click on New , insert the title description if you want . That's it

Going to the second level of the Joomla content architecture , from the Backend home page , click on Category Manager , or from the top menu , hover on content , then click on Category Manager .

You will see a list similar to the sections' one , but every category has a field of the section that contain this category . Also you can delete any of them by selecting from the checkbox on the left , and click delete from the top menu buttton , but you should have first deleted or moved all article being in this category .

Click any category , you will see title , description as usual , but you will find a drop down menu of sections , to choose one them to make this category belongs to . Also you will the category order field, this to order the categories within the section .

Articles . The Backbone of Joomla . Click on Article Manager from the Backend home page , or hove on content from the top menu , and click on Article Manager . You will see a list of articles contained in your website as sample data . Click on any one of them to edit its title and content , and some extra fields from the right panel .

One extra thing , you will find Front Page Manager on the Backend home page , also when you hover on content , this to manage the articles on the home page of your website . On article manager if you click on any article you will see " Front Page" and two radio button saying yes and no . I think it's clear .

So , we explored the content manager of Joomla , we will try to explore the menu manager next post .
Thanks .

What is Joomla btw ?

Joomla is a free php CMS ( Community Management System ) . Off course Joomla is not the only CMS in the world , there are so many CMS , laso some blogs as wordpress can be considered as CMS . To view a list of CMS and compare them , you can visit this website http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

Joomla is considered the son of Mambo , it was started by 2005, to be nowadays the most famous CMS in the world of Open Source

Joomla adopted the MVC Web Application framework , so you can easily edit your content , models , and views ( ie, CSS ) .

Joomla can easily installed as we have see in last post, can be extended very easily to suit the website you would like to develop . Take a look at JED ( Joomla Extensions Directory ) , and you can see the varities of extensions you can install . There are some extensions free , and some ones are not .

Of course Joomla has some limitations , it is suitable for small website , and you will have to do more work to extend it to make large website or applications . Also Joomla can be hacked !!!

By the fame Joomla has earned in the field of web development , it has earned also some fame in the field of hacking , but , Joomla is always updatable . Check Joomla website frequently to see Security release .

In later posts we will explore extensions and templates . Thanks for reading , keep in touch .

Install Joomla - Part 2

So , in part 1 we have set up our computer to be ready to install joomla , and this is can be done to install any php application . Let's joomla .

• Go to http://www.joomla.org/download.html and download the latest joomla stable release , which is now 1.5.11 .
• Unpack the joomla release into a new folder , and place the new folder into the place were the localhost can see . ( it will be C:/AppServ/www if you are windows and using AppServ , and /var/www if you are linux . Go to part 1 for more details ) .
• Back to the browser , type "http://localhost/phpmyadmin " . Make a new database , call it joomla for example . Concerning the collation , choose utf8-bin , it's suitable for many languages .
• Navigate to "http://localhost/joomla" , where joomla is the folder you have unpack the joomla release into it .
• You should notice that the address is changed to be "http://localhost/joomla/installation ", to begin installation , you should choose the installation language . Note : this is will be the language during the installation process , not the language of the website . Choose your language and click next .
  

• 
  This is pre-installation check step , don't proceed if something red in the higher group . If something wrong , the error will be accompanied by an explanation how to fix it . Click next if the higher group is red .
  

• It's a license agreement . Click next .

• The Database settings , enter "localhost" for the server , your MySql username and password , and the database name you created in phpmyadmin .Click next .

• If you want to enable the ftp settings for joomla ( i.e. uploading files and images from the backend of your website ) choose yes , if not choose no . Probably on the localhost , you will choose no , as no ftp . After Choosing Click next .
  

• You should choose a name for your website , and write the administrator email , and password . The administrator username is "admin" . In the lower group of option , you have to choose to migrate from an older version , or to load sample data , you can choose nothing , and begin your site blank . For a beginning , click on load sample data .
  

• That's it , you have only to delete or rename the installation folder in joomla root path , and you can after that begin looking into your administration panel and your website .

• 
  Your site should be like this .
  

Install Joomla - Part 1

In this part we will install our framework , to be suitable to install Joomla , these steps can be done before install any php application .

What you need will not differ if you install joomla on localhost or a shared host , so what you need are

1. Apache Server
   
2. Php 5
3. MySql
4. PhpMyadmin
5. Joomla :)

Concerning websites , 99% you will find all the above , even the Joomla last stable release , and what you will have to do is installing a database and installing joomla , that we will tell and the end of this lesson .

But what the case on any pc ?
I'll talk about linux and Windows .
1) Linux
About Linux you can install what mentioned above from terminal

• Apache
  

Open a terminal and write the following

sudo apt-get install apache2

to test if it's working or not , open any browser and write in the address bar (http://localhost/) , if you see " It works !" , so it does :D .

• Php

also on terminal write the following

sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

to test Php you should restart the Apache Server

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

write the following to test php

sudo gedit /var/www/test.php

Gedit will open and you should write the following line

<?php phpinfo(); >

Save it and close . Open any browser and type in the address bar (http://localhost/testphp.php) , if a table with Php info appears , so it does work.

• MySql

Also on terminal

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

if you are not asked to create a password during the installation
, type the following in terminal

mysql -u root

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('yourpassword');

yourpassword is your password !

• Phpmyadmin

It's a simple tool that manipulate your databases well .

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

if you type (http://localhsot/phpmyadmin and find nothing , search for phpmyadmin where it is and copy it via terminal to /var/www )

That's it for linux :)

2) Windows

You can go the same procedure as linux and install each one apart , but there are several tools to do it on windows

1. Appserv ( recommended )
2. easyphp
3. CDSITE

Appserv come with phpmyadmin , and its sites are located on C:/AppServ/www .
CDSITE doesn't come with phpmyadmin , you can get it from here .

Part 2 soon .

Welcome

Hi Joomla Interested People

I have started Joomla Developing from about 4 monthes , and I am pleased with this open source field . Joomla has proved that it's a valued CMS for building many web applications , its simple structure can let you build what you want from the simple website to the most complex application on the web .

You don't need to be an expert in Php , html or css , to use Joomla , but if you are willing to go deep , you must have some background in web design we will talk about it later .

Let's begin !!!