Install Joomla on Xampp

There are a number of reasons why one would want to have Joomla running on their local development environment! You may just want to mess around with Joomla to see what you can break or improve, or you may just want to work on a clients website locally before committing your changes to SVN.

it’s a very simple process to get going and the most time consuming step is downloading the files!

What you will need:

XAMPP – Don’t let the seductive girl on the website fool you, this is a web development tool. Xampp is basically a single click development box, it installs and configures apache, php, mysql and perl for you with next to no hassle (here is a link to the windows FAQ if needed).

Joomla – If you are already here then there is a good chance you already know and love (or hate) Joomla. Joomla is a free, versatile,  Content Management System (CMS) that has a bunch of plugins and components that are made by the community. Some you will have to pay for and some you wouldn’t want to install on your server. The best thing is it is open source meaning you can write your own additions without too much trouble. Anyway I digress…

Installation

1. Installing Xampp is ridiculously easy. Simply install Xampp and then when you reach the Service section check “Install Apache as service” and “Install MySQL as service”.
2. Create a new folder for your project inside your htdocs folder of your Xampp installation, the default location is: C:xampphtdocs
   So you may have your project along the lines of this: C:xampphtdocsmyProject
3. Extract the Joomla installation zip to the project folder you have just created
4. Make sure Xampp is running and you have turned on apache and mysql
5. Launch phpmyAdmin either directly through the Xampp control panel or by going to http://localhost/xampp/index.php in your web browser and selecting “phpMyAdmin” from the left menu.
   1. Create a new Database that your joomla installation will use
   2. You can use the mysql root user for your joomla project however it is recommended that you don’t! You can create a new user by navigating to the “Privileges” tab and selecting “Add a new users”. Give this new user global priviledges.
6. It’s now time to install Joomla! Visit http://localhost/myProject and follow the prompts!
7. When it comes to the database configuration page,  simply enter the username, password and database name that you just set up and also enter “localhost” for host name field.
8. Now that Joomla is installed you can remove the /installation directory! You can login to your administration section by visiting http://localhost/myProject/administrator and logging in with the username “admin” and the password you defined during the joomla set up.

And that’s it! Once you have mastered the fresh install there is no reason you can’t take an existing joomla website and copy the database and files locally to create a local working environment.

Happy Jooming.