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How to Install a Joomla Site Shaper

This tutorial gives both detailed instructions in video and written format for how to install a site shaper, and have your site setup like our demo; with theme, and extensions pre-installed.

Installation Video

Please follow the video tutorial below for instructions on how to install a site shaper. For more detailed information please continue through the rest of this tutorial.

Installation Process

Installing a Site Shaper is a simple process that will provide you with a replica of our demo sites on your personal server. One of the major benefits to using a Site Shaper is everything comes pre-configured right out of the box with all the demo content. There are a few different ways to install a Site Shaper and your chosen method will be based on the demands of the website you are building. A Site Shaper can be installed on either a remote server (such as SiteGround) or on a local server (such as WampServer). Both of these installation processes are straightforward and outlined further in this Tutorial.


Note that due to licensing restrictions certain images from our demo sites have been replaced with "placeholder" images. The licensed demo images can either be purchased from their respective owners or replaced with your own images by simply swapping them out on the server.


FAQs

  • Site Shapers must be installed directly to the server (not via the Extension Manager)
  • Site Shapers require you to setup a new SQL database for the installation
  • You must choose to install Sample Data to apply our demo content

Technical Requirements

Before installing a Site Shaper you need to make sure that your server meets the minimum system requirements for Joomla. These requirements are necessary for Joomla to install and function properly. You can view your current server configurations on remote servers directly in Cpanel on the left or right hand side.


- - - Joomla 3.0

- - - Joomla 2.5

We highly recommend using Joomla 3.X as this will ensure you have the best user experience possible and be up to date with the latest security and performance benefits. We recommend using the MySQLi database type for Joomla 3.x due to its native support and enhanced performance capabilities.

Installation/Download Process

Site Shapers come pre-packaged with a Template, Joomla and the Demo Content. The first thing you must do is decide on the Template you want to use and download it from our site here (www.shape5.com/downloads). Be sure that you install the correct version of Joomla that you want to use. The -Current files will always be packaged with the latest version of Joomla at the time of release

Once you have downloaded the ZIP folder upload it to the root directory of the site where you wish to use it and then extract the contents. You can complete this process via FTP or the File Manager on your web host.
Once the files have been completely unzipped to the directory of your choice you should see all the Joomla system files similar to the screenshot below. At this point your should also remove your uploaded ZIP folder since it is no longer needed as everything has been extracted


Joomla Web Installer

Once you have uploaded and extracted all the files navigate to the root URL of the site to initiate the Joomla Web Installer. If you installed the files to a sub folder be sure to add /foldername to the end of the URL path


1) The first page of the Joomla Web Installer has some basic input boxes for your site/user information


See below for some details about these fields and what they are used for:


  1. Select Language: Configure the default language your site will use. You can install more language packs later
  2. Description: Add a brief description of what your site is about to be indexed by search engines
  3. Admin Email: Setup the email address that will be linked to your Super User account
  4. Username/Password: Create a username and a password for your Super User account
  5. Site Offline: Choose whether your site will appear as online or offline after installation. This can be changed later in the Global Settings


2) The second page of the Joomla Web Installer requires some details about your servers database that Joomla will be installed to

  1. Database Type: Choose your servers database type. We recommend using MySQLi for most users
  2. Host Name: This is generally "localhost" but certain web hosts will provide you with a specific alternate host name to input in this box
  3. Username/Password: Enter the username/password for your SQL database. New databases can be created in Cpanel or alternate details may be provided by your web host.
  1. Create a database either online or on your local machine depending on where you are installing the Site Shaper
  2. Remember to write down the details such as the "Database Name", "Username", and "Password" as well as the "Hostname". You will need these later on in the installation. If you do not know how to do this you can follow the "creating a database in phpMyAdmin" tutorial.
  3. Open up your web browser
  4. Navigate to the directory where you have extracted the file (the instructions below may help)
    • Local Installations
      • For local installations you will probably navigate to "localhos"
      • XAMPP users should place their files in a folder within the "htdocs" folder
      • item two
XAMPP users will find they should navigate to http://localhost/ yourfolder / Where “ yourfolder ” is the name of the folder where you have saved your files b) Web Installations i. For web directories you should navigate to the directory where you have placed the files 5. You should see the page shown above 6. Click “Next”

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