8482ch03final.qxd
6/29/07
8:16 PM
CHAPTER
Page 67
3
Installation and Configuration I
n the last chapter, you performed a rapid installation and configuration. If everything worked fine, you have the foundation of a site up and running. You may want to begin customizing your site and skip this chapter for now. However, be sure to return to it so you can get a clear understanding of the core Joomla installation structure. This knowledge will benefit you greatly as you begin to do more advanced Joomla modification. If the installation from the last chapter didn’t go perfectly and you hit a few speed bumps, this chapter is for you. In addition to providing extensive installation instructions on each piece of the technology suite (Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server [IIS], PHP, and MySQL) that Joomla uses, it also shows you how to install Joomla on your own server rather than a commercial host. Even if you plan on using a commercial host for final deployment, it’s still generally more convenient to perform testing and development on a desktop machine. Generally, the configuration settings that are best for the experimentation phase of a server are not desirable on a deployment server. Your desktop machine can provide the advantages of local testing (such as direct access to files and server settings) without the security threats that exist in a deployment environment. The multiple programs employed by a Joomla site have to integrate properly and “play nice” for the CMS to function properly. Figure 3-1 shows a general layer diagram of the two different installation options that will be presented in this chapter. Because of the multiple technologies involved in Joomla, it can sometimes be extremely frustrating to track down the source of a problem. In this chapter, I provide troubleshooting guides that should help you to locate and remedy problems you might encounter. The guides solve most of the more common problems that I’ve come across. If the presented solutions don’t directly eliminate the trouble, they should put you on the right track to solving it yourself. Before you begin an installation, however, examining the organization of a Joomla site will help you recognize the directory structure for later configuration.
67