How To: Joomla Installation for ClearOS 5.

1 4 Years ago
Hey guys, I spent a lot of time looking around for a "How To" on Joomla last night and the
links I found that appeared to be useful were no longer working. So, I made my own way
trying to do it myself ( Its not my first CMS, but it is my first on ClearOS) and I came up
with some instructions that I thought I would share with everyone.
Here goes.
1. Go to Server> Web Server> and Follow the web site setup guidelines given in the ClearOS
Documentation. Start it. Set it to Auto startup. Go through all of the steps including setting up
your FTP and Firewall Settings, until you get to the point to where you can:
a. FTP to the site on port 2121 and see the directory or directories for your web site(s). These
should reflect the same domain names that you set up in the Web Server.
b. Browse to your IP address (or domain name) of your web server and see the Clear OS
temporary screen. ( N ote: the temporary index.htm and the logo.png files are only in the root
or first/default domain you setup in Clearos. If you make additional/virtual domains, you will
need to copy those 2 files into the virtual directory in order to see the temporary web page.)
Here is the ClearOS Web Server Setup guide:
Web Server Users Guide
Other notes:
I created a separate user name and password and a separate group called web_admin to assign
for FTP web access. This is done under users and groups, and then finaly by going to the web
site settings and selecting the web_admin group as the group that has permission to edit the
web site.
2. Go to Server> MySQL> and set up your SQL server. Start it. Set it to Auto startup. Enter
in a password that is different from everything else that is a strong password, and write it
down. You will need this password both for web applications you install, but also if you ever
want to change the password you will need the original one to make a new one through the
ClearOS interface.
3. On the MySQL page you will also notice (if you look hard) a link that will take you to the
management page of your MySQL server. It looks like this " You can manage your MySQL
database through another web interface. -- Go". It is the word GO that you must click on. I
would then book mark this so that you can easily go there in the future.
4. "Go" there and log in. Your user name will be "root" (without the quotes) and your
password will be what ever you set it up to be when you turned on MySQL (Step 2).
a. You will see a field called Create New Database. Type in a simple name like "database1".
Leave the other settings to default, and click on the "Create" button.
b. Your database is now ready for joomla
5. Go to the Joomla web site and download the latest stable release of the software.
www.joomla.org> click on Download Joomla> then click on the "zip" that is beside " English
(UK) 1.x.xx (presently 1.5.22 ) Full Package.

NOTE: if this is your first time installing a MySQL based CMS system to a web server, I
recommend reading through the Joomla documentation before proceeding. You will find it
useful and things will go much smoother because you will begin understanding what is going
on.
6. Once the file is downloaded extract it to a directory on your computer. Once extracted you
will see files and folders in this directory.
7. Open up your FTP program and connect to your site. (I use FileZilla). Double click on
your domain name folder on he right side and if you have the two files I mentioned earlier,
you can delete them or back them up to your PC. On the left side of your FTP program
browse to the folder you created and extracted the joomla files to then select all of the files
and folders within that directory and upload them to your domain directory.
8. Once the files have finished uploading the files, look for errors or any indications that files
may have not copied and remedy/retry those to the point that you are 100% sure that all of the
files are on the server).
9. I saw this post from another site and if there is a better way to do this give me some feed
back. What I did was create a blank text file on my PC. I opened it up with TextPad, I didn't
type anything in the file (left it blank) and then saved it as "configuration.php" and then I
uploaded it into the root domain directory with all of the other Joomla files. The other post
said this would help, and I didn't see one of these files after the upload of the Joomla files
was completed..but I knew it had to be there from what I read. ( Does the joomla installation
process automatically create one if it is not there? )
Anyway, I then edited the permissions of the "configuration.php" file on the server (using my
FTP program) and I changed it from 664 to 777. The reason for this ( I remembered this from
my CMS days of using Mombo) is that the Joomla Installation will have to write to this file.
It is important to remember that once the installation is finished to set the permission of this
file back to 664 for security reasons.
10. Now, open a browser and point it to either http ://ip_address/ or http
://your_domain.name/ and you will see the Joomla installation web page.
11. Follow the pages. They are fairly straight forward
a. Select your language and press next
b. This is the pre installation check. If you have any red marks, I suggest you correct them
before going forward. Mine did not have any (mainly because I already had the
configuration.php file in place and the permission set correctly. If I had not, it would have
shown up here. Press next when things are ready.
c. Read the agreement (dont we all?) and click on next
.
d. On the database page select "mysql", then enter "localhost" as the host name. put in a user
name of "root", and the mysql password you set up earlier in the password field. Then put the
name of the database that you created earler in the database name field, example "database1"
if you used the same name in step 4. click on next.
e. On the FTP page, this is where things got frustrating for me. I kept getting an error
message saying "The ftp settings are not valid or your ftp server is not compatible...".
Enter in all the info you normally use to connect your FTP program to the server. Leave the

local address as it is at 127.0.0.1. Put in the port field 2121. Set both radio buttons to "Yes",
and then comes the frustrating part I mentioned above, the "FTP Root Path" I couldnt get
this setting right.
I am not a web server gooroo, so this may be obvious to some of you, but for me it was
frustrating. The documentation you read from Joomla and most of the post I found will lead
you to believe a long string needs to be here in this field. Something like
"/var/www/joomla.com" or "/var/www/virtual/domainname.com". And in fact this is how the
primary root is displayed under the Clear OS> Server> Web Server> Edit> screen. But it
won't work. You may need that long root path for other settings in your CMS or other
packages you install, but in two instances ( I performed this on two different ClearOS Servers
and domains) It did not work. So I opened a trouble ticket with ClearCenter using their
ClearCARE product to try to clarify things.. (they were very friendly and responsive, by the
way.. A great service!) and I found out that all you need to put in this field is
"/domainname.com". In other words, going from right to left, if you delete everything after
the first slash (/var/www/virtual) and only put the last slash and the domain name it works
fine.
Maybe there is a difference between "document root" and the "FTP Root Path". I am sure
there is, so if anyone wouldnt mind giving an explanation, please tack it on to this post.

f. Once you get past the FTP settings you are basically home free. The next page is the
configuration page. Put in your administrators email address, and then put in the Joomla
master password. I also clicked on the "Install Sample Data" button, but that is optional. Then
you click next
g. Read the directions on the next page. Delete the "installation" directory as it tells you to do.
Then click on the Admin button and log into the administrator interface. Dont forget to book
mark it.
h. Oh, and one last thing, go set the permission of that file from 777 back to 664. You may
end up turning the write permissions back to 777 while customizing things, but if I remember
correctly from my Mombo days, you want this set back to 664 for security reasons (you
gooroos out there correct me if I am wrong).
At this point, Joomla is up and running for me. I have not started customizing it yet, but I can
pull up the main web page as well as the admin interface now. Add that to the ability to FTP
in and modify or upload files and images and I believe that I am all set to begin some
customization.
I hope this helps others. To me, that is what life is all about. So many have helped me here in
these forums and all throughout my life so I try to take time to give back when I can.
If you find any major problems with this "How To", please let me know by posting here.
Sincerely,
George Miller