Using Joomla

System Requirements

If you used Fantastico to install the latest stable version of Joomla 1.5, you already have the basic requirements to run Joomla and you can skip this section.

Since Joomla is written in PHP, it makes sense that you must have PHP installed. Currently, the recommended version is PHP 5.2 or higher. Joomla will run on certain versions of PHP 4, however PHP 4 has reached its end of life and anyone using it needs to upgrade to PHP 5. PHP can be downloaded from http://www.php.net.

MySQL is a very popular database that Joomla uses to store all of that dynamic data. It is recommended that you have MySQL version 4.1.x or higher. As of this writing, Joomla is not compatible with MySQL version 6.x. Visit http://www.mysql.com to download MYSQL.

Although Joomla will run on IIS 6 and 7, it is advised that you use Apache as your web server. You should also ensure that the following Apache modules are installed in order for Joomla to function properly: mod_mysql, mod_xml, and mod_zlib. Apache can be downloaded from http://www.apache.org.

Setting up a web environment from scratch is not the easiest thing for a novice to do. If you want to try this on your local computer, you don’t have to download all of the pieces and install them. Appendix A explains how to install and use an all-in-one Apache distribution called XAMPP (on Windows) and MAMP (on Mac OS X).