What are Joomla Templates?

Templates define the general layout of a website:

• Fonts
• Colors
• Location of logos, text etc.

For Joomla you can get many free templates and many paid templates, here are some examples where you can get free templates:

• Joomla24, we need a Joomla 1.5 template

I downloaded JP_praisecorp.zip for this tutorial.

Install template

• Login to the administrator part of your Joomla site.
• Choose from the Menu Extensions, Install
• Click on the Browse button and select the Template file you downloaded.
• Click on Upload file & install, wait a while until you see a message "Install Template success"
• Now select from the Menu Extensions, Template Manager, you can now see all the templates.
• Select the template you uploaded and click on Default.
• If you click on the name of the template you can choose some additional options, which are different for each template. Many things are self explanatory, so just try them out and see what happens.
  • If you click on the top most Preview, you can now see how your web-site looks like.
  • If you click on the Preview button, you can see your web-site and also some light colored name tags, e.g. user3 etc. These names are important for the different modules we can use with Joomla. Modules can be latest headlines, most favorite articles, advertisement etc.
    Each template can arrange these modules in a different way, so here you can find out where all the module positions are.

Important news, a security for Joomla is available, it updates Joomla to V1.5.7. It fixes 1 critical, 1 major and 2 moderate vulnerabilities. Detail and download links are here.

Here is are some general instructions how to install a Joomla update, but MAKE A BACKUP FIRST!

Just installed it without any difficulties.

In part 3 we installed Joomla V1.5 using CPanel, now we'll update it to the latest version, to have the most bug free and safest.

The following steps are necessary:

• Check which version is currently installed
• Download the correct update
• Upload and install the update (This tutorial assumes that your website has no content yet, otherwise make a backup first!)

Check which version is installed

1. Login into the administrator area of your website, i.e. go to http://domainname/administrator.
2. Enter username and password which you chose during the Joomla installation.
3. In the top right corner you can now see the version no, for example Version 1.5.2.

Download the correct update

1. Goto http://www.joomla.org/download.html.
2. Look for Download other Joomla 1.5.x package (you can also try to click this link directly.
3. Now look for a file with this name "Joomla_Your version no_to_1.5.X-Stable-Patch-Package.tar.gz and download this file.
   Replace "Your version no."w ith the the version number we found earlier, e.g. 1.5.2. "X" will be the latest version no, which is "6" as of today.
   Important: You must download the update file with the extension .tar.gz, to quickly apply this update patch with CPanel. ZIP works also but applying the Patch with CPanel is very troublesome.

Upload and install update

1. Login into CPanel, ie. go to the address http://domainname:2082 and login with the Username and Password, which your webhost gave you.
2. Look for the symbol for "File manager" and click on it.
3. If a dialog box opens with these options
   
   • Home Directory,  Web Root (public_html/www) , Public FTP Root (public_ftp), Document Root
     Select "Web root" and click go.
   • If you don't get this dialog you'll probably see a list of directories and files. Doubleclick on the folder symbol before the folder "public_html". The folder will open now.
4. Now you are in the folder on the webserver that will accessed when somebody uses this address: http://www.domainnname.tld.
5. If you didn't choose any path during the installation of Joomla you don't need to go any other folder now.
   If you entered a path doubleclick on the folder symbol before the name.
6. When you are in the Joomla folder, look for the symbol Upload or Upload file and click on it.
   Browse for the Joomla Update patch we downloaded and upload the file. Depending on your CPanel version you might need to close the upload Window manually.
7. Now look for the Joomla update patch in the filelist. Depending on your CPanel version:
   
   • If there is a checkbox in front of the file tick it and click on extract. You'll be asked for a path, leave it unchanged and click on Extract files.
     
   • If there is no checkbox click on the filename and click on Extract file contents afterwards.
8. The update patch will be applied, to check if everthing went smoothly follow the same instructions as above to check your version no.

Note: If you registered a new domain it might take a few hours to a few days until it is available, if below steps are not working you might need to wait a bit.

Step by step installation using CPanel

1. Type this into the address line of your webbrowser:
   http://domainname.tld:2082.
2. Type in username and password, which your webhost gave you.
   If everything is alright you can now see CPanel, where you can change most settings for your website.
3. Look for the Fantastico icon and click on it.
   Now you see a list with the applications that can be installed to the webserver.
4. Click on Joomla 1.5. On the right hand side you can now see a short description about Joomla etc.
   
5. Click on "New installation".
6. Now you need to enter some information to set up Joomla:
   Install on domain: Choose your domain name
   Install in directory:
   
   • Leave it empty, if you want that the website to load when you type in just your domain name, eg. http://www.infoxenter.com.
     
   • If you enter a directory name here, you need to write http://www.infoxenter.com/directory to access your website. This is quite useful for testing certain settings etc.
   • Now we leave this empty, so that our website is easily available.
   Admin access data: Enter a username and a password which you'll need later on, to change the settings of Joomla.
   Admin email: Write your email.
   Admin Full name: Your name.
   Site name: The name of your site, later it will appear as (c) sitename on your website.
   Install sample data: Leave it ticked for now. Joomla will install some menus, articles etc. which will greatly help you to understand how Joomla works. Later we can delete those.
   
7. Click on Install Joomla 1.5. After a short while you'll get a message and your website is online!!
8. To test it out: Type your domain name into a webbrowser, you should see a page about Joomla. Feel free to play around a bit.
   To enter the Administrator mode, where you can change your Joomla settings, add users, articles etc., you need to use the address: http://domainname/administrator. Type in the administrator usename and password, you chose beforehand during the Joomla installation. Also feel free to look around.

In the next step we'll update Joomla to the latest version. Today's latest Joomla Version is V1.5.6, but with Fantastico you probably installed a lower version. As of today Fantastico from Lunarpages installs V1.5.4 and the one from iHubNet V1.5.2.

When you start with a new installation of Joomla you should always update to the latest version, before you add articles or adjust the layout. Usually some bugs or security holes will be fixed. Some hackers might even try to compromise your website so better be sure you have the latest most secure version!

In the first part I wrote about Joomla in general, now let's get started to get our own website online. We need

• a webhost (a place where your website is stored)
  
• a domain (i.e infoxenter.com)

Webhost

You should look for a webhost with the following features:

• PHP4 and PHP5 support
• MySQL database
• CPanel (not essential but this is a well known frontend to configure and maintain your website. It is easy to use and also this tutorial will tell you how to change things using CPanel).
• Shared web hosting: This is the most cost efficient solution, you are actually sharing one server with many other websites. The disadvantage is of course that you share the server, so if another website on this server has very high traffic, your website will also get slow. If you want your own server you have to go for a dedicated server, but this is very expensive and usually the solution for bigger companies.

If you google these keywords you'll get about 258,000 results... So which one is the best?

As we started InfoXenter I asked myself the same question, so first I tried Hostmonster (aka Bluehost). Many people will tell you it's good, many will tell you it's bad. Well my experience was quite bad, it went smoothly for about a week, but then  my website was unreachable for many hours and also on several days. So I looked for alternatives and asked Hostmonster for my money back, which they did without any hassle.

So here my short list, there might be better ones, feel free to leave a comment.

• Hostgator (USD 4.95 per month for 350GB space for the website)
  
• Lunarpages (USD 6.95 per month 1,500 GB space) (sometimes cheaper when they have a promotion)
  
• iHubNet (USD 8.95 per month for 2GB)
  

The actual price might vary depending on how long you subscribe.

Currently I have websites hosted by Lunarpages and iHubNet, and for both it has been a quite good experience. iHubnet seems to have a faster connection/server but you have to pay more for much less space. Space matters if you want to have videos and thousands of pictures on your website.

Domain

The three webhosts I mentioned are all US companies, so they only offer domains which are widely available in the USA, e.g .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, . name, .us. If you want another domain like ".hk" you have two choices:

1. You look for a webhost which has the above mentioned features and can offer you the domain you like,
2. You register the domain with another registrar. You can look at the IANA Root Zone Database, which lists all available Top Level Domains. Click on the one you like and on the bottom of the following page you'll find a headline "Subdomain information".
   For ".hk" you will find this Link: URL for registration services: http://www.hkirc.hk.

For other domains you will find similar entries. Follow the link you found and check below things:

• Can I register domains directly?
• Am I allowed to register this domain? Some domains have some requirements that must be met, e.g. live in the country where a certain top level domain belongs to.
• How much does it cost? Sometimes it is cheaper to find a provider.
• Are there any subdomains that might be interesting? For Hong Kong you can get .hk, .com.hk, .org.hk, .gov.hk, .net.hk , idv.hk and also some Chinese, but some of these also have certain requirements, e.g. .com.hk is only available for companies registered in Hong Kong.
• How do I set my DNS records? You must enter two DNS entries to your domain, so that the domain entry points to the right server. First ask your webhost which DNS records you should use and than enter these for your domain. If you're not sure how to do this ask your webhost and domain registrar for help. Usually they are very helpful.

How to check if a domain is still available

Your webhost or domain registrar usually offer a form where you can check availability. You can also use the Whois command which is directly available in the command line of Mac OSX or Linux, just type "whois domain". You'll get a text answer which shows you either the domain owner or it will say something like "No match found", meaning it is still available.

Alternatively you can also you http://www.whois.net/ which offers a similar service on the Web.

If you find a suitable domain you can go ahead and register it and also subscribe to a webhost.

If all the domain names you liked are used, you can try to write to the owner of the domain if he would release it, you can find the domain owner with Whois as mentioned above.

Whoo, this got longer than I thought, but it also the most troublesome part, because it is really difficult to find reliable information, which webhost is good or bad.There are quite a few comparism lists available but sometimes I got the impression they are sponsored by the webhosts themselves.

In the next part I'll show to to install Joomla (finally!).