Joomla!

Joomla! is an award-winning Content Management System (CMS) that will help you build websites and other powerful online applications.

This guide applies to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) as well as to 7.04 (Feisty Fawn)

Quick shortcut

An Ubuntu-based Joomla appliance is one of the easiest ways to get up and running with Joomla 1.5.x on Ubuntu. It's part of a family of pre-integrated TurnKey Linux Software Appliances based on Ubuntu 8.04.2 (Hardy LTS).

Installing

Note that this guide applies to Joomla! 1.0. Installing Joomla! 1.5 requires some additional steps.

1. Install the LAMP stack

Use any method to install the Apache2, Mysql and Php stack. You will need the following packages:

apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server

Set a mysql-root password (not the same as a root password, but a password for mysql)

mysql -u root

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('yourpassword');
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'yourhostname' = PASSWORD('yourpassword');

Where you should change 'yourhostname' in last line. Each successful mysql command will show:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Quit the mysql prompt:

mysql> \q

You should now have a functional LAMP stack and a password for the mysql root user.

Visit Apache PHP MySQL for more information on LAMP.

2. Get Joomla!

Download it from here. Unpack it and then copy it to your webserver directory.

# Change for new version
SOURCEPKG=Joomla_1.0.15-Stable-Full_Package.tar.bz2
SOURCEWWW=http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/6828/22536/Joomla_1.0.15-Stable-Full_Package.tar.bz2

# Get it
mkdir joomla
cd joomla
wget $SOURCEWWW

# Unpack it
tar xvjf $SOURCEPKG

# Cleanup
rm -f $SOURCEPKG

# Move
cd ..
sudo mv joomla /var/www/

Handle ownership (choose one option):

# 1. Allow writting in whole joomla subtree
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/joomla

# 2. Allow writting only in places Joomla! needs to write to (more secure)
sudo chown -R root:root /var/www/joomla
cd /var/www/joomla
PLACES='
administrator/backups
administrator/components
administrator/modules
administrator/templates
cache
components
images
images/banners
images/stories
language
mambots
mambots/content
mambots/editors
mambots/editors-xtd
mambots/search
media
modules
templates
'
for i in $PLACES; do
    sudo chown -R www-data:www-data $i
done

Handle file and directory permissions:

cd /var/www/joomla
sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

3. Joomla needs a database, user and password

You need to create a database. You can do this with PhpMyAdmin or via the command line:

mysqladmin -u root -p create joomla

Where joomla is the name you picked for the mysql database that joomla will use. You can call it anything you want.

mysql -u root -p

mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES ON joomla.* TO 'yourusername'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';

You do not want to have Joomla use the mysql root user to access the database. The above command creates a mysql user (other than the mysql root user) with some priviledges to use the joomla database. You will need to chose the yourusername and yourpassword. If the command was successful, activate the new permissions:

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Quit the mysql prompt:

mysql> \q

Open history file for MySQL commands and delete the above SQL, since the password is in readable format!

gedit ~/.mysql_history

4. Reload Apache2

You may need to force-reload apache2 so that it knows to use the php module if you haven't done so since you installed the LAMP stack.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Finish installation

Point your browser to localhost/joomla, and follow the onscreen instructions.

1. Pre-installation check

If everything is listed in green, you may proceed.

2. Licence

Joomla! is GPLed.

3. Database configuration

Configure the database name, username and password.

4. Name your site

Give your site a name

5. More site information

Enter site URL and administrator user and password

6. Finish install and remove installation directory

You will be asked to remove the installation directory once configuration is complete.

sudo rm -R /var/www/joomla/installation/

Please refer to the Joomla! installation manual for more details, specially to Joomla! Administrator's Security Checklist.