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How to use joomla to create a simple website

Joomla is an open source content management system (CMS) that powers almost 2 million websites on the Internet.

The platform offers many advanced features, allowing you to easily create a site website or an app.

Considered one of the best WordPress alternatives, Joomla supports various post types and custom fields, such as gallery, calendar, and checkboxes. This allows you to create a dynamic website without using third party plugins.

This article will provide a step by step tutorial on how to install Joomla and its core components. It will also walk you through the content creation process and give you some tips on how to speed up your site.

Getting to Know Joomla

Joomla provides all the tools users need to manage, update, and publish content. In addition, the platform allows you to create any type of website, whether it is for a personal or commercial project.

From site administration to the main enhancement, Joomla also helps extend the functionality of your site with the large number of extensions available. . They are categorized into these types:

  • Components: Core extensions that you can modify from the back-end and view on the front-end of your site. Some examples are com_content, com_newsfeeds and com_weblinks.
  • Modules: lightweight extensions or widgets that display certain types of content, such as recent articles, article categories, or search boxes.
  • Plugins: Pieces of software that provide additional functionality, such as adding a music player or social networks. media sharing buttons to improve the performance of your website.
  • Templates: Sets of designs and layouts that control the appearance of the site. A template defines how Joomla components and modules are displayed on the website.
  • Languages – Offers translation packages to create a site in multiple languages.
  • >Libraries : Collections of code related to functions that are used in modules, components or plugins.

You can find them on the official Joomla! Directory and other third-party sources such as Joomlart and Joomdev.

Due to the flexibility, many famous brands and organizations use this platform for their websites, including Harvard University, Linux.com, Guggenheim, MTV Greece and UNRIC.

Of course, this platform also has a steeper learning curve compared to other CMS. Don’t worry as there are plenty of articles, tutorials, videos, forums and documentation to help you out.

Installing Joomla

There are two ways to install Joomla: automatically and manually.

Using Hostinger’s Auto-Installer

Most web hosts include auto-installers that allow you to configure the software from the admin panel. In Hostinger’s hPanel, users can access auto-installers under the Website menu.

If you are using Joomla web hosting, the procedure will be the same.

  1. Open the Auto Installer, search for Joomla and click Select.
  1. Enter your website credentials and select Next. Specify configuration details such as your domain, preferred language, administrator email, password, and username. When you’re done, click Install.
  1. Once the installation is complete, you can log in to the control panel and start creating your Joomla website.

Manual Joomla Installation

Another way to configure Joomla is through manual installation. This method will require you to create a database to serve as storage for the content.

Before proceeding with the installation, download the latest version of Joomla from its official website.

Once the download is complete, access your web hosting control panel to create the database.

  1. Navigate to your hPanel -> Databases-> Administration. Define your database name, username, and password in the fields provided. Then click the Create button.
  1. When your database is ready, upload the downloaded .zip file from your computer to your server using the File Manager >. Choose the domain or access all files.

Open your public_html folder and click the Upload Files button in the corner Upper right.

Click File to select the installation package for your computer to begin the process.

After the file has been successfully uploaded to the folder, you should see the file name listed.

  1. Extract the file to retrieve the contents by right-clicking and selecting the Extract option.
  1. Access your domain name through any browser. This will take you to the Joomla Main Settings page.

Choose your preferred language, then fill in the blank fields.

  1. Enter your MySQL database credentials from the steps above.
  1. Review the settings and click Install to finish.

When the installation process is complete, the page will prompt you it will indicate that Joomla has been installed successfully.

You can now access the Joomla administration panel at yourdomain.com/administrator and start working on your project. p>

Creating a Website with Joomla

The following section will help you get familiar with the basics of Joomla and show you how to perform various tasks from the Control Panel.

Adding Articles

Articles in Joomla refer to blog posts that users display on their websites.

  1. To create one, log in to your admin panel and click Content -> Articles -> Add New Article .
  1. The window will open the WYSIWYG editor, where you can write and modify the article.

When you’re done, choose one of the three statuses provided: Published, Unpublished, or Archived .

  1. Press the Save button or select Save and Close to be directed to the Articles page. Once the post is created, it will appear in the Latest Articles section of your website.

Creating Categories

A category in Joomla allows users to organize their posts based on relevant topics. If you plan to create a wide variety of content, creating categories will make it easy for people to find information on your site.

To assign a category to your content, be sure to create them ahead of time:

  1. Click Content -> Categories -> Add New Category in the top bar menu.
  2. Fill in the Title, Description and Alias (optional).
  3. Select Save > or Save and Close to create your new category.

In addition to assigning a category to a post, Joomla allows you to categorize other components, including banners, contacts, and web links.

Adding Featured Articles

To feature an article, go to Content -> Articles. There, you will see the list of posts published on your website. Simply click the Star icon next to the desired article to make it featured.

With this feature, you can display and highlight specific posts from multiple categories on your home page.

Creating Menus

Joomla menus play an important role in defining the structure of your site and improving the user experience. The simpler your site menu is, the easier it will be for people to navigate your website.

You can display a featured article page and other dedicated pages on your website by creating menus.

  1. Go to Menus -> Main Menu and choose the option Add New Menu Item. li>
  2. Type a title for your menu item, for example “Featured Articles” then define the Menu Item Type. For this Joomla tutorial, we will choose Articles -> Featured Articles.
  3. Select which Menu item to display and press Save > or Save and Close.

The new menu should now be accessible from your website.

Other than

Items featured, Joomla has other types of menu items that you can configure, including:

  • Blog Article Category – displays blog post categories in a layout from blog.
  • Unique News Feed – Highlights an RSS feed.
  • Featured Contact – Displays a list of featured contacts .
  • Search Results : Enables a search form for visitors.

Creating components

The Components in Joomla refer to extensions that are responsible for the main elements of the place. They are made up of two main categories: administrator and site.

The admin side allows you to modify aspects of the components in the back-end. The site part works to display the pages requested by your visitors.

This tutorial will show you how to create the default Joomla components such as News, Contact Us >page and banner.

News Feeds

The News Feeds Manager allows you to display news from other websites on your Joomla site .

  1. To get started, go to Components -> News -> Feeds.
  2. Click New and fill in the required details: the Title, Link of the source you want to display, and the Category.
  3. Press the Save button.

Contact page

Other function of Joomla that can help with the user experience is the contacts component. Allows you to receive feedback from visitors and increase engagement by creating a Contact Us page.

  1. To create a Contact Us page, go to Components -> Contacts .
  2. Press New and fill in your contact details.
  3. Use the Miscellaneous Information tab if you want to add a description.
  4. Save the page when you are finished.

Banners

Joomla provides a banners component, which allows you to create and edit banner ads, as well as image sliders or carousels.

  1. To create a banner, click Components -> Banners -> Banners.
  2. Press New in the upper left and enter a name for your banner
  3. Upload your image and fill in optional details such as dimension, alt text, and description.
  4. Once you’re done , press Save and Close.

To publish a new module and display your new banner, go to Extensions -> Modules. Press the New button.

A list of modules will appear; select Banners. Sets the Title and Position of the module. Finally, Save your settings.

As an example, we’ve added a featured image banner to the footer of our “Hostinger Joomla Tutorial” project.

In addition to the core components above, there are many more available in the Joomla extensions directory. Each extension serves a specific function, from site structure and navigation to styling and design.

Installing Joomla Extensions

A Joomla extension refers to a package software that improves the functionality of the website.

You can manage your extensions through the Extensions -> Manage section.

To perform a manual installation, follow these Steps:

  1. Download the .zip package from the Joomla extensions directory.
  2. Go to Extensions -> Manage -> Install section.
  3. Click the Upload Package File tab.
  4. Choose the file and upload the .zip file.

With thousands of selections in the extensions directory, finding the right one for your website can be a pain . Here is a list of must-have extensions for your Joomla website to help you get started:

  • All Videos – Allows you to embed internal or third-party videos . and audios within its content. It also integrates with Unsplash to generate images for audio files.
  • Akeeba Backup – Creates an open source backup of your website in a single file . The AJAX-powered system helps avoid waiting times during backup and restore processes.
  • Admin Tools: Fix the permissions of your files and directories by enabling a password. The software also periodically notifies and installs a new version of Joomla.
  • JSitemap – Generates an XML sitemap to allow search engines to better index your website. It provides integration with Google Search Console and Google PageSpeed ​​Insights.

Installing Joomla Templates

Joomla has many free and paid templates available online, although not as many as WordPress or Drupal. The process of installing templates is almost identical to installing extensions.

  1. Download the template and go to Extensions -> Manage – >Install.
  2. Navigate to Extensions -> Templates -> Styles. Tap the star icon next to the template you want to enable.

Clicking the star icon will activate the template as your default user interface , but you can apply different templates for your front-end and back-end.

The front-end template defines how your main website is presented to your visitors. Meanwhile, the back-end template controls how the elements are displayed in the admin panel.

Joomla Backup

As a website owner, it is important to perform regular backups of your website. . With website backup, you can revert changes made by technical or human error without losing any data.

Some hosting services offer automatic backups of your site’s files and databases, regardless of which CMS you use. Hostinger automatically creates weekly or daily backups, depending on your type of hosting.

  1. To access and download these backups, log into hPanel, go to Files and click Backups. You will be presented with two backup options: the MySQL database and the website files. If you are using a CMS, such as Joomla, you will need both backups.
  2. To download files from the website, click File Backups. For databases, choose Database Backups.
  1. Select the data from the backup you want to restore later and click Prepare for Download. The system will automatically start the download process and notify you once it is finished.

Alternatively, you can also backup your Joomla files and databases on your own.

Making a Joomla backup manually

To create a backup manually, you must first archive all your Joomla files and databases.

  1. Access the File Manager through your hPanel.
  2. Open your main Joomla installation folder and select the Download icon > in the top menu.

3. Select the .zip file.

On Hostinger, you can create a backup of the database directly through the Files menu instead of using the phpMyAdmin tool.

  1. Access Files in your hPanel and select Backups.
  2. Click Select on the Database Backups option and choose from the available databases.

The system will start the backup process. Once this is done, a backup success message will appear on your screen.

Remember that you can only generate a backup within 24 hours.

Also, every time you create a new one, it will automatically override the previous backup files.

Using Akeeba to Backup Joomla

Akeeba Backup is the most popular open source Joomla extension. However, it is not in the official directory, so you will need to download the extension from the official Akeeba website.

Follow the tutorials below to set it up:

  1. Navigate to Extensions -> Install to upload and install Akeeba via Upload Package file.
  2. Go to Components -> Akeeba Backup.
  3. Click Setup -> Setup Wizard to activate a benchmarking wizard that will optimize backup performance for your site.
  4. Once the process is complete For the benchmarking test, you will be given three options:
    • Back Up Now – Back up your website immediately.
    • Schedule automatic backups: Set the time and date to automate your backups.
    • Settings : Change the settings that the benchmarking wizard has set

That said, Akeeba Backup’s free package does not support remote backups via FTP, Google Drive and Google Storage. It also prevents you from generating separate backups for your database and site files. To enable such tasks, you can subscribe to its premium version for 50€/year.

Updating Joomla

Keeping Joomla updated is very important due to several factors. :

  • Security – Joomla regularly releases updates and scans for vulnerabilities to keep your website secure.
  • New Features – every time Joomla releases a new update, it comes with new features and changes to improve the functionality of your site.
  • Performance– latest version of Joomla fixes bugs and issues technical, improving the performance of the website.

Every time you log in, Joomla will automatically check if there are new versions available.

You will see a new notification at the top from your control panel if there is a new version present in the official repository. It will contain the name of the update along with an Update Now button.

Click the button to go to the Joomla update page. You will see the information about your current and new versions of Joomla. Click Install to start the installation.

Joomla Acceleration

Whether you’re running a business website or a personal blog, the speed of Load is one of the essential factors that determine the user experience. Google also defines the performance of a site as a ranking factor that affects SEO (search engine optimization).

A web page that loads slowly may have a higher bounce rate. Also, it can impact the conversion rate by an average of 2.11% for every additional second.

With that in mind, we’ll show you two ways to improve the performance and loading speed of your website.

Enabling Gzip compression

Compression is the process of reducing the size of files, including HTML, CSS , PHP and JavaScript. Gzip compression helps you decrease the overall file size of your website, reducing the loading time of your site.

  1. To enable Gzip compression, go to System -> Global Settings from your admin panel.
  2. Click Server-> Server Settings -> Gzip page compression . Select Yes and Save your changes.

Gzip compression is now enabled for your website.

Enabling Joomla’s Default Cache

A cache is a temporary storage location that collects data such as files, scripts, and images to make websites load faster.

When people access your website, Joomla’s system automatically queries its database to retrieve data from the Internet and deliver it to visitors. As your database expands, it will take longer for the system to obtain this information.

By enabling caching, the system will retrieve files from the saved cache every time people visit your site. In this way, the response time of your website will be much faster.

To enable caching for your website, follow this tutorial:

  1. Go to the same Global Settings section and select the System tab.
  2. In the Cache Settings, choose which Cache Manager you want to use. On most shared hosting providers, the File cache driver should be applied.
  3. Leave Path to cache folder empty unless you want to save the cache files in a custom directory.
  4. Cache Time determines how long cached content stays the same before being updated; the default is 15 minutes.
  1. Leave Platform-Specific Caching as No, unless you provide different HTML content on mobile devices.
  2. Enable System Cache by selecting one of the two available options.
  1. Save your changes.

Using Cache Plugins

Another way to enable caching is to enable the cache plugin.

  1. To do this, go to Extensions -> Plugins.
  2. Find the page cache plugin through the search field. Mark the Status column with a green checkmark.

Having done this, your website’s loading speed should improve.

Conclusion

Joomla is an open source content management system that comes with powerful built-in features and functions. Compared to other CMS, this platform has several advantages, including:

  • Advanced User Management: Allows multiple administrators to manage and control the environment and settings of the site.
  • Multilingual support: There is a built-in translation system that allows you to produce multilingual content.
  • Flexible templates: Configure different templates for your front-end and back-end interfaces.

Joomla has a steeper learning curve compared to WordPress. However, with ever-growing and widely available documentation, tutorials, and forums, learning Joomla has become more accessible.

Overall, we hope this article has helped you understand more. on this platform. Once you have set up your Joomla website, don’t forget to perform backups, updates and caching to optimize its performance.

Joomla FAQ

Here are some of the the most frequent. asked questions about Joomla.

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