Joomla & Koha

Joomla! is an award-winning Content Management System (CMS) that will help you build websites and other powerful online applications. Modern CMSes like Joomla allow you to organize and update web-sites without using any local editor; all editing is done online.

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.

Download Joomla!

You should download the latest stable version from the official Joomla Download page. Unpack it and then copy it to your webserver directory.

NOTE - the default root directory for Apache2 is /var/www. If you intend to use Joomla exclusively you don't need to create a 'joomla' sub-folder as instructed in their official documentation.

# Change for new version

SOURCEPKG=Joomla_1.5.14-Stable-Full_Package.tar.bz2

SOURCEWWW=http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/10785/42653/Joomla_1.5.14-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/

Configure Access Rights

The default folder rights will block various Joomla functions so you need to change the rights. There is the quick/easy way, and the more sophisticated way; choose one:

# A. Quick but less secure. Allow writing in whole joomla subtree

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/joomla

# or B. More secure (recommended). 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 {} \;

Configure MySQL

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

I believe the Joomla 1.5 install does it automatically, and prompts you for a name

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

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

Reset GNOME Keyring Password on Ubuntu

rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/default.keyring