How to Install Joomla Manually on WebHostingHub

While installing Joomla through Fantastico Deluxe on your WebHostingHub hosting account may be the easiest way, there are times when you might need to proceed to a manual installation.

For instance if you customize the Joomla source code, you might want to handle the updates and upgrades manually so that Fantastico doesn’t mess up all the customization you’ve done if you updated it automatically.

Follow these simple steps in order to install Joomla manually:

1. Grab the latest copy of Joomla

Head over to http://www.joomla.org and click the Download button.

From the list of available files, select the .zip archive. Extract the content on your local hard drive.

2. Upload Joomla to your hosting account

Using your favorite FTP client (I always use Filezilla), upload the content from the extracted Joomla archive to your web hosting account. If you want to install Joomla at the root of your main domain then you will need to upload the files into the /public_html directory. Otherwise, create a sub-directory under /public_html and upload the Joomla files there.

For this tutorial, I’ve chosen to install Joomla on a subdomain (joomla.webhostingnews.biz) which corresponds to /public_html/joomla on my Joomla hosting account. Ultimately, the content of your Joomla directory should look like this:

3. Create a MySQL Database

In order to store the data for your Joomla website, you will need a MySQL database as well as a user account to access it. I will not go into detail about this here since I’ve already written a tutorial titled Creating a MySQL Database on Your WebHostingHub Account.

4. Launch the Joomla Installer

Hang on, you’re almost done, this is the easy part. Use your web browser to access the URL of your Joomla website to launch the installation wizard.

Select the installation language and hit the Next button until you’re prompted to enter the MySQL database information. Enter the MySQL username, password and database name you just created earlier and click Next when you’re done:

On the next page, you’ll be prompted to enter the FTP configuration parameters. Skip this step and hit Next again.

On the Configuration page (step 6 from the Joomla installer), enter a name for your website. You’ll also need to enter your email address, a username and a password. I strongly recommend you don’t use the default username provided by the installer for (obvious) security reasons.

Don’t click Next yet! Before going any further, you need to install the sample data. Simply hit the Install Sample Data Button and wait until it is greyed out and its labeled has changed to Sample Data installed successfully.

5. Delete the Installation Directory

Your newly installed copy of Joomla just won’t work until the installation directory is deleted. Simply use your favorite FTP client and delete the directory named “installation”:

That’s it!

If everything went well, Joomla should now be running smoothly on your new website. Try accessing it to make sure it is working.

The Joomla administration interface can be found in the administrator sub-directory of your website (ie.: http://www.yourjoomlawebsite.com/administrator).