This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1 The best-selling Joomla tutorial guide updated for the latest download release Hagen Graf BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1 Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: February 2007 Production Reference: 1160207 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-84719-238-7 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by www.visionwt.com Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education Deutschland GmbH, München. First published in the German language under the title "Joomla! 1.5" by Addison-Wesley, an imprint of Pearson Education Deutschland GmbH, München. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Credits Author Project Manager Hagen Graf Patricia Weir Translator Indexer Wolfgang Spegg Bhushan Pangaonkar Development Editor Proofreader Louay Fatoohi Chris Smith Technical Editor Production Coordinator Divya Menon Manjiri Nadkarni Editorial Manager Cover Designer Dipali Chittar Shantanu Zagade This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 About the Author Hagen Graf was born in July 1964. Born and raised in Lower Saxony, Germany, his first contact with a computer was in the late seventies with a Radioshack TRS 80. As a salesperson, he organized his customers' data by programming suitable applications. This gave him a big advantage over other salesmen. With the intention of honing his skills, he joined evening courses in programming and became a programmer. Nowadays he works in his wife's consulting company as a trainer, consultant, and programmer (http://www.cocoate.com). Hagen Graf has published other books in German, about the Apache web server, about security problems in Windows XP, about Mambo, and about Drupal. Since 2001, he has been engaged in a nonprofit e-learning community called "machm- it.org e.V.", as well as in several national and international projects. All the projects are related to content management, community building, and harnessing the power of social software like wikis and weblogs. He chose Joomla! CMS because of its simplicity and easy-to-use administration. You can access and comment on his blog (http://www.bloghouse.org/en/hagen). This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 This is the third time a book of mine has been translated from German to English. It isn't easy to organize the translation in another language in a reasonable way, especially on a topic on Open Source Software. One point is that most of the software is developed in international communities basically in the English language. Another point is the speed of the development. Release fast, release often! Today we have Joomla! 1.5 Beta 1 and the development is going on. It is now time for thanks... I wish to thank the Joomla community who made this wonderful world wide project possible. I also wish to thank the Packt Publishing team, especially Louay, Divya, Dipali, Bhushan, Chris, Manjiri, and Patricia. I also wish to thank Alex Kempkens, core member of the Joomla! devteam. I also thank Tom Bohaček, Anne-Kathrin Merz, and Andy Miller for their templates. They all have done an excellent job! This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Terms, Concepts, and Deliberations 7 Content Management System 7 A Quick Glance into History 8 Joomla!—How was it Developed? 11 Structure of a WCMS 13 Front End and Back End 13 Access Rights 13 Content 13 Extensions 13 Components 14 Templates 14 Module 14 Plug-ins 14 Workflow 14 ConfigurationSettings 15 Joomla! as Real Estate 15 Joomla! Versions 16 Numbering System of Joomla! Versions 16 Roadmap 17 Changes in Detail 18 Internationalization 18 User Plug-ins 18 XML-RPC support 18 Support of Several Databases 18 FTP System 19 Overhaul of the Joomla! Framework 19 Web Accessibility 19 Search Engine Friendliness 19 Google Summer of Code Projects 19 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Table of Contents Joomla! Features 20 Examples of Joomla! Pages 21 Joomla.org 21 Ada Gaffney Shaff, USA 22 Janette Norton, France 23 Urth.tv, USA 24 unric.org, Europe 25 Summary 25 Chapter 2: Installation 27 Client-Server System 27 Accessing a Joomla! Website on the Internet 27 Technical Requirements for Joomla! 28 Necessary Elements for a Joomla! Installation 28 Local Test Environment 29 Windows Operating System 29 Linux Operating System 29 Mac OS X Operating System 29 Production Environment 30 Rented Virtual Server 30 Your Own Server 30 Setting Up the Local Server Environment 31 Windows 31 XAMPP for Windows 32 Linux 35 SUSE > 9.1 35 Debian/Ubuntu 36 Your Own Server at a Provider 36 Joomla! Installation on a Virtual Server on the Net 36 Joomla! Installation 38 Selecting a Directory for Installation 38 An Example 38 Directory 38 Extracting 40 Joomla! Web Installer 41 Step 1: Choose Language 41 Step 2: Pre-Installation Check 42 Step 3: License 43 Step4:DatabaseConfiguration 44 Step5:FTPConfiguration 46 Step6:Configuration 46 Step 7: Finish 48 Summary 50 [ ii ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Table of Contents Chapter 3: A Tour of Your New Website 51 Front End 51 Menus 53 Top Menu 53 Main Menu 54 Other Menu 54 Content 54 What is Content? 55 First Page/Front Page 56 The Latest Messages/The Most Often Read Messages 57 Advertising 57 Banner Area 58 Functions 58 Login Area 58 Polling 59 Who is Online? 60 Feeds 60 Search Field 60 Decorative Elements 61 Back End 61 Summary 64 Chapter 4: Customizing Joomla! 65 Configuration of Joomla! Administration 65 Help Menu 67 Joomla! Help 67 System Info 68 Site Menu 69 Control Panel 70 User Manager 70 Editing Users 72 Adding New Users 76 Media Manager 77 Creating a Directory 78 Uploading a File 79 GlobalConfiguration 80 Site 81 Users 86 Content 88 Server 91 Logout 96 Menus Menu 96 Menu Manager 97 Main Menu 98 [ iii ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Table of Contents Trash Manager 106 Creating a New Menu 107 Content Menu 113 Article Manager 114 Creating a New Article 118 Article Trash 127 Section Manager 128 Category Manager 130 Frontpage Manager 132 Article Statistics 133 Editing Content from the Front End 134 Tools 135 Private Messaging 135 Mass Mails 136 Global Check-In 137 Summary 138 Chapter 5: Components and Extensions 139 Components Menu 139 Banners 139 Banner Clients 140 Manage Banners 141 Contacts 145 Contact Manager 145 Category Manager 149 News Feeds 150 Polls 152 Web Links 154 Links 155 Categories 156 Extensions Menu 157 Install/Uninstall 157 Module Manager 158 Site Modules 158 Banner 160 Breadcrumbs 161 Footer 162 Main Menu 162 Login Form 164 Statistics 165 Archive 165 Sections 165 Related Items 165 Wrapper 166 [ iv ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Don Fountain on 7th April 2007 24800 I-45, Suite #140, , The Woodlands, , 77386 Table of Contents Feed Display 167 Joomla! Book 167 Polls 168 Who's Online 168 Random Image 168 Advertisement 169 Syndication 169 Newsflash 169 Latest News 170 Popular 170 Search 171 Copy a Module 172 Administrator Modules 173 Logged in Users 173 Popular 174 Recent added Articles 174 Menu Stats 174 Footer 174 Unread Messages 174 Online Users 174 Quick Icons 174 Login 174 Admin Menu 174 User Status 175 Admin Submenu 175 Title 175 Toolbar 175 Cpanel Shell 175 Plug-In Manager 175 Authentication Plug-Ins 176 Content Plug-Ins 178 Editor Plug-Ins 180 Editors-Xtd Plug-Ins 180 Search Plug-Ins 180 System Plug-Ins 180 XML-RPC Plug-Ins 181 Template Manager 181 Site Templates 182 Module Position 182 Administrator Templates 182 Adding a New Template for Your Website 182 Modifying a Template 185 Language