Today we will talk about Joomla templates. First of all, you need to download and install Joomla on your computer with Web server enabled, PHP installed and MySQL configured. If you do not know how to install them, you can refer to this excellent instruction on how to install PHP, MySQL and Apache on your computer.
Joomla installation is not complex, you need to create a MySQL database, unpack the Joomla to the root of your Web server and open it in browser. After several questions and following an installation instruction you will end up with the installed content management system, called Joomla.
On the front page of Joomla find the Administrator link and click on it. You will be redirected to the login form of the administration section. Log in with the username and password specified during the installation. After successful login the system will redirect you to the control panel of your site with dozens on options.
But our interest is templates (or themes) – the very important part of any site. Installed Joomla themes are available under the Template Manager option in the Extensions menu.
Joomla / Extensions / Template Manager
Default Joomla installation includes two templates: rhuk_milkyway and beez. These themes are good, but most likely you will want to change them to some a little bit more attractive or neat or to just something not so common.
Googling for “Joomla templates” will bring you several millions of links with a few very good directories of free Joomla templates on the first page of the results.
After selecting and downloading the theme you need to install it. Joomla cannot help you with that so you have to do that manually. For this open the theme package (which is a ZIP archive in most of cases) and explore the folder structure of the theme. There is no standard for theme packaging, so template creators utilize different approaches on how to package their templates. Some template packages may contain templates for Joomla 1.0 and Joomla 1.5, some of them may contain several variations of the same theme.
Joomla template files lies in one folder and this folder should contain templateDetails.xml file. So the reneral rule is to find such folder in theme package and copy it to the templates subfolder of the folder with installed Joomla. In some cases you may need to create a subfolder in the templates folder to copy template files in it.
When you installed the template, you can preview how you site will look with it by opening the template in Template Manager and clicking Preview or by adding the template query string parameter to your site URL as follows:
http://localhost/Joomla/index.php?template=new_template
where the “new_template” string is a folder with template files.
July 23, 2008 at 3:14 am
Thanks for that Wizard. I’m just at the beginning of creating my first Joomla site and it was a pleasure to read something so clear and well written. Best wishes for your new blog… I’m sure you will help a lot of people.
=) Marc