Joomla! CMS (content management system) is a highly popular open-source software, intended for building websites and powerful online applications. It provides extensible and easy-to-use ecosystem, that enables to empower applications of all shapes and sizes. Since Joomla is a free CMS, it delivers the most demanded and frequently used functionality by default. However, there exist thousands of both free and commercial extensions to satisfy any specialized needs.

With a minimal amount of effort, you can get a new site up and running with such appealing features of the Joomla platform as:

• support for language internationalization (offering over 65 languages)
• inbuilt WYSIWYG editor with the drag-and-drop feature for visual content editing
• advanced infrastructure components (Media Manager, Article Editor, Smart Search, etc)
• embedded one click version updater
• integrated contextual help system and thriving community of users and consultants actively assisting in the corresponding forums

Now let’s see how Joomla CMS can be easily installed at Jelastic PaaS: the step-by-step guide below will pass you through the application deployment flow inside the Cloud.

It is also possible to install Joomla in one click from Jelastic Marketplace.

Set Up Joomla-Dedicated Environment

To start with, you need to create an environment with the appropriate application and database servers. In our example, the Apache PHP server (with the latest PHP 7.1 engine version) and MySQL DB are leveraged.

1. Login to the Jelastic dashboard with your credentials and press the Create environment button at the top panel.

Switch to the PHP tab, choose Apache application server and add the MySQL node. Specify the number of resources for the corresponding nodes, select the preferable region (if several ones are available) and set the name for your environment. Click the Create button and wait for the environment to appear at the dashboard (it may take several minutes).

2. As a result, you’ll get an environment with similar topology:

3. Now let’s apply some slight preconfigurations to your MySQL server in order to optimize its performance and subsequently gain the best user experience with your CMS.

For that, we’ll adjust the sort buffer size allocated by a server –  click on the Config button next to your database node to open the File Manager tab.

Note: The same configs need to be applied if operating with MariaDB database server.

4. Herein, move to the etc directory (located it in the Favorites list) and open my.cnf configuration file.

Within its content, search for the sort-buffer-size parameter and increase the default value up to 254K. Once finished, don’t forget to Save the changes.

5. Restart your MySQL node to apply the new buffer allocation config.

Great! The required environment is properly set up, so now we can proceed with deploying Joomla CMS application to it.

Deploy Joomla CMS

The entire application deployment procedure is performed directly through the Jelastic dashboard and requires not more than just a few clicks.

1. Visit Joomla official website and select the required application release (the latest Joomla 3.6.5 release in our example) within its Downloads page.

Download .zip package with compressed application by clicking Download now button within the chosen release page.

2. Next, upload the package to the dashboard via the Deployment Manager and press the Upload button.

3. Initiate deployment of the just uploaded .zip package by selecting the target environment from the drop-down list (e.g. my-joomla-website).

In the opened deployment frame, specify the desired context name for your application (or leave it empty – the ROOT one will be used by default in this case) and click the Deploy button to proceed.

Tip: You can also activate the zero-downtime deployment option with the corresponding switcher within this frame. This will ensure extra HA for your application during subsequent redeployments (i.e. while updating and integrating new app version).

After Joomla CMS deployment is successfully accomplished, proceed implementing the required database configurations.

Create a New Database for Joomla

Now, let’s create a dedicated database for Joomla CMS and a separate DB user to interact with it.

1. Click the Open in browser button next to your MySQL node in order to access phpMyAdmin web interface.

2. In the opened browser tab, log in using credentials you’ve received via email upon server installation.

Press the Go button to access the page.

3. Once logged in, navigate to the Users tab at the top panel and press the Add user button.

4. In the opened window, specify the appropriate login information (i.e. username and password).

Tick the Create database with same name and grant all privileges checkbox to get a DB with the required privileges. Then press the Go button at the bottom of the page. After that, you’ll receive a response:

That’s it! Now we have a separate database and DB user to operate with our CMS.

Run Joomla Installation

Once your application is deployed and the database is configured, you can proceed with Joomla installation. So switch back to the Jelastic dashboard and follow the steps below.

1. Click the Open in browser button.

Web page with Joomla installer will be opened in a new browser tab.  

2. The installation flow is rather simple, therefore let’s pay attention to the Database Configuration settings only.

The required fields should be filled up in the following way:

• Database Type – select the preferred MySQL driver extension (i.e. MySQLi or MySQL PDO)

It is highly recommended to choose MySQLi extension in order to use all the advanced features available within the latest releases of MySQL database (such as object-oriented interface, enhanced debugging capabilities, support for transactions, multiple and prepared statements, etc).

• Host Name – paste the link to your DB without the “http://” protocol and “/” at the end
• Username & Password – define DB user to interact with Joomla CMS (i.e. the one you’ve created above) by specifying the entered credentials
• Database Name – type DB name you’ve specified during database configuration
• Table Prefix – set your own prefix or use the automatically generated one

The table prefix should be 4 or 5 alphanumeric characters long with an underscore at the end, e.g. joom1_. Subsequently, it will be substituted with a real prefix during runtime by Joomla. Also, make sure that the specified prefix is not used by the already existing table (if you’ve got one).

• Old Database Process – if there are some already existing tables of your own (from former Joomla installations with the same Table Prefix), choose the suitable option to be applied to them

Click on Next to proceed with Joomla installation.

3. At the final Overview stage, check the applied settings and, if everything is fine, press the Install button. Once the installation process is successfully accomplished, you’ll see the following message.

Here, you can apply some additional language settings before the obligatory removal of the folder with installation files.

Open your environment in a new browser tab (with the same-named button next to it) to see a ready to work Joomla site.Congratulations! Now you have your own site with Joomla application hosted inside Jelastic Cloud.

We encourage you to try this solution for free on our jelastic cloud platform.