Setup a new site in Joomla

If you decide to go with Joomla what’s the best way to set up a new site?

Here’s my view after trying set up sites in different ways.

As I see it there are two ways . . .

• Do a clean install of Joomla and install the test data
• Do a clean install of Joomla but leave out the test data

Which is best and why?

When you first start with Joomla you have no idea what things like sections and categories are, why they are useful and how they link together. After a couple of weeks I’m still wondering too, so don’t get discouraged. If you let the installer put in the test data you will have a fully-populated working site. Great you may think. But you would be wrong.

Wrong because you don’t know how it all hangs together and that’s because you didn’t build it yourself. That means you don’t know what the bits are and how they fit together.

Compare that with an ‘empty’ install of Joomla.

In this case there is nothing. I mean nothing there, when you visit your site all you will see is the heading and a title. That’s great.

Great because you will have to read the tutorial and start building from scratch. There’s nothing like reading the documentation and doing what you are told to make you remember and understand.

Just do it that way and you will understand and make real progress.

10 days passed, not all spent learning about and using Joomla, but lots of progress made.

I find it VERY frustrating that I know exactly how I want a page to look and link into other pages but I don’t know how to persuade Joomla to do it. Well, now at least I’m getting to know my way around Joomla enough to know how to do certain things.

I’m still confused by Sections and Categories, and getting the right look to pages, but it’s getting easier.

I can see light at the end of the tunnel.