I wanted to have a look at the Joomla CMS ( all the developers came from the Mambo team, after the split with Miro , sad really ) , so to start with I set up apache, php, mySQL with the xampp package from apachefriends.org. It was very easy. Not very secure, with lots of cautions and red boxes, but great for a quick server. It can also switch between php4 and php5 so we can test both – a bonus. I installed on windows 2k, stopped all the IIS services and then ran xampp. It started up fine and the initial web page was just there on localhost. Everything can be run as a service as well.

Installed then checked the status. All seemed ok, apart from the SMTP mail not being there as default. I didn’t need this. Then downloaded Joomla and expanded it into a directory underneath the xampp/htdocs/ folder. Browse to localhost/joomla/ and the Joomla front page comes up. Joomla needs a password on the mySQL setup, so I looked at the command line app to do that, but before I did it, I checked the security page on the xampp opening screen. It shows 5 major Unsecure flages and gives a link to fix three of them. I did it this way. Added a weather secret password for the mySQL and similar for the xampp directory, admin user. It goes in .htaccess. Needed to do this on the localhost machine itself. Need to restart mySQL to pick this password up.

I’ll leave safemode OFF until I get used to joomla. It says that it may be used by some of the packages. Tut tut!

Php comes with the Ming Flash v0.3 module and it seemed to demo OK. Must try that sometime.

Joomla has a similar few pages to do the install, name the db, add the admin weather password etc. Pretty easy. Site came up and I needed to delete the installation pages. Delete the whole directory, refresh and we’re up and away. Glasshouse web site, news, rss feeds etc etc. This could be done in less than an hour!

Admin login to Joomla is site/administrator/index.php
Login to phpMyAdmin is root.

Q’s

Can we run two sites from the same Joomla installation pages?