Creating a Joomla! website: Step by step to your own website

If the web server and database are running, visit the Joomla! website and download the installation files for the latest version of the content management system by clicking the download button:

You can work in the back end (and also in the front end) comfortably via the browser of your choice. After you have connected your desired domain with Joomla!, all you have to do is type the URL “http://www.name-of-website.com/administrator” into the browser to open the login window for the back end. Do not forget to replace the example address “name-of-website.com” with the domain address of your future website. On the login page that appears, enter the administrator data you specified during the installation before clicking on “Log in”:

After logging in, you will be taken to the Joomla! control panel, which gives you an overview of the most important data about your website and its activities in the content management system. This way you can see which versions of the operating system, PHP, and database you are using or how many visitors are currently on your site, which users are logged in to the back end or front end, and which changes were last made to the web project. Via the control panel, you can also access the options menu of the CMS, where you can adjust the basic settings of your Joomla! website. Use the “Global” tab in the left menu bar to access it:

In the “Site” tab, you will find the settings decided on during the installation – such as the website name, the global meta data, or the switch for offline mode of your web project. You can also specify which editor you want to use for your work in Joomla!: The WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE is preselected – but as an alternative the simple code editor CodeMirror is available. However, thanks to appropriate extensions, popular editors such as ARK Editor or JCE can also be integrated.

After installation, the administrator account is still the only user account. But of course – depending on the type and scope of the web project – there are also other users who are also involved in the management of the website or the design of the content. Therefore, Joomla! already provides a ready-made, hierarchically-structured user schema, which you can adapt at will. To do this, first click on “Users” and then on “User Groups”:

If you want to make changes to the user group schema, check the box for the desired group and then press the “Edit” button. Alternatively, you can delete groups completely using “Delete.” To define the access options for the various user profiles, switch to the “Permissions” tab mentioned in the previous section in the “Global” menu. There you click on the group or subgroup to be edited and then select one of the following three settings for the respective access action:

• Inherited: Permission is transferred from the parent group
• Allowed: User group may perform the action independently of the settings of the parent group
• Denied: User group may not perform the action regardless of the settings of the parent group

If groups and assigned access rights meet your requirements, you can create new users and assign them to the desired groups. To do this, access the “Users” menu and click on the “New” button. Now it is necessary to enter the names and user names as well as a valid e-mail address of the new user and to mark in the tab “Assigned groups” which group or groups this new user account should be assigned to. Then click on “Save & Close” to create the account. This should now be visible next to the administrator account (Super User) in the user listing.

If you create websites with a CMS like Joomla!, you have the big advantage of having all design templates (mostly called themes or templates) available to you. In the basic version, Joomla! offers the responsive templates, Protostar and Beez3 (the former is selected by default). However, if you have another Joomla! template in mind for your web project, you can integrate it at any time via the back end. To do this, first download the template and then implement it by clicking on “Install Extensions” in the control panel and then on “Upload Package File.” If you drag and drop the downloaded template file(s) into the designated area, Joomla! automatically starts the installation.

After the installation, you will find integrated templates in the menu of the same name, which can be accessed via the control panel. In order to activate them, simply click on the asterisk symbol in the “Standard” column of the desired template. Joomla! confirms the selection in the following in the form of a notification.

Pages of a web project are called contributions in Joomla!. If you selected this option during the installation, the placeholder “Getting Started” already exists, the content of which you can already see when you visit your website at the current time. To finally create the first page of your own Joomla! website, click on “Articles: Edit” in the control panel. Select a title for the page and then use the editor to add the required content. You can use the “Format” button to format headings, bold text, italics, or paragraphs. Finally, click “Save & Close” to generate the page.

You can now edit or delete your created Joomla! page at any time under “Articles.” To make it the start page of your web project, you have to go to the “Menus.” First click on "Main Menu" and then on “Home.” At this point you can define the post that should be linked to the main menu and also to the homepage of your website. On the “Select Article” option, click “Select” and then click the created page:

If you access your website via the preview function or URL, you can see the content you just created directly on the homepage:

Links are an important component of successful websites, because internal and external links increase the added value of your offer and improve the search engine ranking. As soon as you have the appropriate link material, you can place it in your texts with just a few clicks: For external links, simply select the text component to be linked to and click on “Insert/edit link.”

You should also integrate images into your web project, because even the most interesting content won’t attract readers if there aren’t images to break up the text to make it easy on the eyes. In order to enhance a post with photos and graphics, you only have to open it via the article menu and then select “Image” in the editor:

Joomla! offers you access to some banners, headers, and sample images, which you can use freely in your web project. If you want to use your own images instead, scroll to the bottom of the menu, click on the “Browse...” button and specify the location of the corresponding image files. Then select all the images you want to import and click “Open”. Joomla! shows how many files have been selected – start the upload to the web space with the button “Start Upload”:

Now click on the image you want to insert into the article and fill in the information about the orientation (left, center, right), the image title, or the description. Finally, click on “Insert” and the image will appear at the desired position in the current post: