Installing Joomla 1.5.X On Ubuntu
Creating professional looking web sites has greatly improved with the emerging number of CMS tools. CMS have come along way! CMS (Content Mangement System) allows a community or group of people to manage the content of a web site. This becomes a very powerful tool, as it empowers all members of the community to keep their data updated. The need to constantly place request to the web admin are over. Users can now manage their own piece of the pie!
I’ll go over the basic steps of installing and configuring Joomla.
Steps
- Install dependencies
- Download Joomla software
- Modify Permissions
- Install Joomla
- Install Dependencies
Like always we’ll need to install some pre-requisite software before we can even start. In order for Joomla to effectively work, we need to install the following software.
- Apache2
- PHP5
- MySQL
- VSFTP (Very Secure FTP)
Using terminal type the following:
sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-server php5-mysql unzip
During the installation you will be prompted to enter a password for the ‘root’ user in MySQL. Pick any password and enter it. Remember the password since you are going to need to reference it later. In my example I’m going to use mysqlPass.
MySQL Password
Now we need to install VSFTPS. In order to have Joomla import and export files into the web server it’s going to need an FTP connection in order to accomplish that. We’re going to install VSFTP it’s a straight forward FTP daemon and easy to configure.
sudo apt-get install vsftpd
Now we need to configure VSFTP:
sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
- Change ‘
anonymous_enable = YES’ to ‘anonymous_enable = NO’
- Change ‘
#local_enable = YES’ to ‘local_enable=YES‘(remove the # sign).
- Change ‘
#write_enable = YES’ to ‘write_enable=YES‘(remove the # sign). - Ensure that local_umask is uncommented and looks like ‘
local_umask=077‘
Save your changes: [ctrl + X], Save Modified Buffer [Y], Press [Enter] to the default file name.
NOTE: To uncomment ensure that there is NO ‘#’ sign at the beginning of the line.
In order to be able access the FTP site we’re going to need to create a dedicated user that will be able to access the joomla site.
sudo useradd joomlaUser
sudo passwd joomlaUser
for our example we’re going to assign this password to be ftpPass
sudo mkdir /var/www/joomla
sudo ln -s /var/www/joomla /home/joomlaUser
Last dependency file that we’re going to configure will be php.ini
sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
- We need to find ‘
display_errors = On’ and change it to ‘display_errors = Off’
- Next we need to change ‘
;session.save_path = /var/lib/php5‘ to ‘session.save_path = /var/lib/php5‘ (simply remove the ‘;’)
save your changes and exit.
Download Joomla Software
Now we’re ready to download Joomla. At the time of this writing, version 1.5.15 was the latest version. Please check www.joomla.com for the latest version.
cd /var/www
sudo wget http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/11396/45610/Joomla_1.5.15-Stable-Full_Package.zip
sudo unzip Joomla_1.5.15-Stable-Full_Package.zip -d /var/www/joomla
Modify Permissions
Now that we have Joomla downloaded and unzipped in the directory that we wish to use, we’ll need to modify permissions so that Joomla can write to it.
sudo chmod 777 -R /var/www/joomla
Install Joomla
Now we’re ready to actually start installing and configuring Joomla!
Before we start we’re going to restart all our services.
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart
If you’re using ubuntu server with command line like I am, you are going to need the ip address of your server so you can access the joomla web interface.
ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0c:29:c9:86:84
inet addr:192.168.0.237 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fec9:8684/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:46210 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28816 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:59888493 (57.1 MB) TX bytes:2798305 (2.6 MB)
Interrupt:17 Base address:0×1400
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:85 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:85 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:6880 (6.7 KB) TX bytes:6880 (6.7 KB)
In my case I get something like the above. My ip address for my server is at 192.168.0.237
Open up a web browser and type in the following (of course substitute your IP address for mine!):
- http://192.168.0.237/joomla
You should now see joomla’s installation site and it should be prompting you for the default language. Select your language and click on ‘next’.
Language Selection
The second screen should now run a diagnostics pre-installation test. The top window should have all YES and the bottom window should have all OFF if we did everything correctly. If everything looks like the below image select ‘next’.
Preinstallation Configuration
The next screen simply shows you the GPL (General Public License). Once you’ve finished reading it select ‘next’.
General Public License
We are now ready to enter our configuration information for our MySQL database into Joomla.
- Database type should be MySQL by default.
- Host name should be localhost unless you have a different machine hosting the database. Username should be root.
- Password should be the password you assigned root when you installed MySQL. I’m going to user mysqlPass.
Database name should be joomla. (You can assign any name you like, I just chose Joomla)
MySQL Configuration
If everything is going well, we should be seeing the FTP configuration screen.
- Enable FTP file system layer should be YES
- FTP User should be joomlaUser
- FTP Password should be the password you assigned to the joomlaUser. I’m going to use ftpPass.
- Click on ‘Autofind FTP Path’ the ftp root path field should now be populated with ‘/var/www/joomla’
- At the bottom select YES for save FTP password.
FTP Configuration
We are now on the main configuration page. This is the last page before we finish!
- Site name is the name you want to call your web site. I choose ‘My Site‘
- Enter your email here to receive notifications for the super admin group
- The password you enter here is the password that you will later on have to use to enter the administration back end tool. I’m going to use joomlaPass
- Select Install sample data if you would like to include the sample data into your joomla installation. I would recommend this if this is your first time dealing with Joomla. Good way to see were everything goes.
Main Configuration
If everything went alright we should now be at the finish. The warning you see on the right side means that we must remove the installation directory on joomla so we don’t accidently run the installation process once again.
Complete
To wrap things up we’ll remove the installation directory
Once again using terminal:
sudo rm -r /var/www/joomla/installation
- We can now click on the top right button of the finish page where it says ‘Admin‘
- The new page should now be prompting us for a username and password. The default username is admin and the password is the password you set earlier. I’m going to use joomlaPass.
Backend Login
You are now ready to create and modify your very own Joomla site! To access the frontend of the site you can type in http://yourserverip/joomla
Enjoy!
Awesome Tutorial…..Completely hassle free and well documented ! Keep up the good work..