Joomla 3.0 Installation

Thought it would be nice to show those who don’t want to go through the entire installation process what the new installer looks like + have a quick gander at the new Admin UI.

First make sure your server matches the Joomla 3.0 minimum requirements:

• Web Server: Apache 2.x+ or Nginx 1.1+ or IIS 7
• RDBMS: MySQL 5.1+ or MSSQL 10.50.1600.1+ or PostgreSQL 8.3.18+
• PHP: PHP 5.3.1 or higher — make sure Magic Quotes GPC is off. If it is on just siwtch it off in php.ini or a htaccess.

As you can see Joomla 3 can run on a variety of web/database servers. Your server (or localhost) will need to have one of the above as a minimum. I’ll be using Apache and MySQL as that’s the most common deployment – but there really is little difference between them and the instructions will stay the same.

Note: if you want to work on localhost and don’t have the above just download one of the commonly available stacks to get you going quickly, e.g. WAMP or Xampp on Windows or MAMP on Mac (Linux has all of the required software in it’s software repository already so just use yum, aptitude, rpm or whatever your package manager is to install).

OK, so let’s get going:

• Go to www.joomla.org

• Click on the Joomla! 3 button
• The following page links to the current Joomla versions. 2.5 should be used for most production website but we want 3.0 in this case, so click on Download Joomla! 3.0.

• Now click on Download Joomla! 3.0 again on the next page (yeah I know!). The other link is for the patch upgrade file for the latest security release (currently 3.0.1). This is already prepackaged in the latest 3.0 download archive.

• Download and extract the archive to a newly created folder in your web root.
• Create a database to hold the installation and note the host, username and db nameOpen your browser and navigate to the folder you extracted the files into, e.g. http://localhost/myjoomla3/
• The Joomla 3.0 installer will be launched. Notice the new clean look and feel – you’ll be seeing more of this.Enter the name of your website, e.g. “My Joomla 3.0.1 Test Site”

• Optionally enter a description – this is used to generate the website’s meta description.Enter your email address and choose a password for the website.If you are installing onto a publicly available remote server I would recommend setting “Site Offline” to Yes. That will stop spiders and users from accessing the website whilst it’s still in development.
• Click Next
• Right, here’s the familiar database screen. Enter the details you noted earlier and click Next — no need to change the Table Prefix unless you really want to.

• Finalisation screen – Joomla is getting ready to install. The last two things you need to decide is whether to install sample data and whether to email config settings to the admin. The new Sample Data section is a nice new feature. One can select the type of website they want to install – Joomla comes with 5 themes:
  • Blog,
  • Brochure,
  • Default,
  • Learn Joomla and
  • Test English.
• Alot cleaner than the “all-in-one” sample data of Joomla 2.5. I’ve selected Blog in this case (though I usually select None).
• Have a look at the Pre-installation check and recommended settings. If any are red or amber it is recommended to fix these before proceeding.

• Click Next
• Joomla begins it’s installation process and displays and informative progress display

• Once finished the sytem will display a confirmation screen, your username and email address and links to the frontend and admin. NB: Make sure to click on “Remove Installation Folder” to get rid of the install files. We wouldn’t want anyone stumbling across these.

• Click on the Administrator button. Voila! Here’s the nice new Joomla 3.0 login.

• Logging in shows a drastically altered admin console. The frame is reminiscent of the Joomla website. Note: all the usual functionality is still available from the top menu. Context is to the left. The image below shows the (customisable) Dashboard view.

• Next up is the Global Configuration view. Note the new standard position of the Save, Save & Close, Cancel and Help buttons. This is the new position and style across the whole admin and all components.

• Next up – the Article Manager. Nothing unfamiliar here, but I do think the new layout works better than in previous versions of Joomla. Pay attention to the Sorting options. This is one of my favourite new features. Ordering has always been a bit of a pain in Joomla. Now on can select a sorting option and rearrange ordering by dragging items up and down on the list. No need to use those fiddly, POST-reliant, up and down arrows any more. A small point, but a great time saver. Also notice the small arrow beside the rolled over article name. Clicking this will display a context menu with quick shortcuts to Edit, Publish, etc.

• Next up – Edit Article view. Note the Publishing options, Article Options Metadata, etc. are now separated into additional tabs making for a far less intimidating and complex view.

• Right, so what does the frontend look like? Quite nice actually – far nicer to what we have been used to with Joomla 1.0.x, 1.5.x and 2.5.x . Fresh and Clean.

Well there you have it. A quick run through the Joomla 3 installation process and a peak at the interface. We’re quite excited about Joomla 3. Not only does it provide quite a few extra features and nicer look and a feel out of the box it also provides a standard UI and widgets on the backend that should help keep a much stronger consistency across the core and the plethora of extensions that you will come across.
Joomla has grown up!