Quickstart: Setting Up a Joomla! Site in 20 Minutes

Joomla installation can be a tricky process, because it leverages the operating system’s
security functions as well as three independently developed server systems: web server,
code execution engine (PHP), and MySQL. Running into at least one problem during
installation is more likely than not.
For this reason, I’ve tried to include as many screen shots as possible in this Quickstart
chapter, so you can see what’s going on at each step of the process. If you encounter
a problem, please take a deep breath and don’t worry—you won’t be left to your own
devices. If you can’t find the solution to your problem in the “Troubleshooting” section of
the next chapter, you can turn to the thousands of people on the Joomla forums (http://
forum.joomla.org) for help. It’s been my experience that if you do so, you’ll receive a quick
and clear answer.
The figures included here are mostly from an installation performed on the Windows
platform. Joomla is cross-platform, however, so regardless of whether your final deployment
server runs Windows, you can execute design and development experiments on
a different operating system.