Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Abstract
Need to launch a feature-rich website quickly where you have one or more people authoring the content? Want to use a powerful, robust, and scalable Content Management System (CMS) you can trust? This Short Cut will get you up and running with Joomla 1.5, a freely available open source CMS. Learn how to install, configure, customize, and extend your Joomla installation. Also learn the tricks of the trade in how to set up and manage both your content and your users. Joomla can be a challenge to understand at first, so drastically cut your "get up to speed" time by taking the Short Cut!
For this material to work, we have made some assumptions about your knowledge. While we make every attempt to help the reader understand how to perform a particular task, we limit our coverage of operating systems, web servers, PHP, and databases, so that we might focus the majority of the content on Joomla (http://www.joomla.org) itself. Here are some of the assumptions we make:
You know what Joomla is—at least enough to understand it is a CMS and it is used to manage and deliver websites.
You are using Joomla 1.5, not 1.0.x. If you need 1.0.x covered, please consider purchasing the first edition of this book.
You do not expect this material to be comprehensive. Keep in mind it's a short cut—not a comprehensive guide. Although we often provide pointers to features and functionality that we do not cover in detail, it should not be expected that we mention or cover everything. If you see something you want to know more about, please check out the Joomla website.
Once we provide the URL, you can locate the necessary files to download and install for your system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.).
You have a user account with the necessary permissions to install and configure these components on your machine. Although it is not required, preferably you have root or administrative access.
You have command line (direct, or via telnet or ssh) access to the machine you are performing the installation on. We also assume you know how to remotely access the machine, if necessary, and how to use the command line.
You know how to modify filesystem permissions as needed.
You have basic networking knowledge, such as understanding how to access machines on your network via hostname or IP address and port numbers. This also includes knowledge of terms such as localhost.
You have a basic understanding of web servers (Apache, IIS, etc.), databases (MySQL), and PHP to the point of being able to install, configure, and run them.