How to install Joomla on Debian 10?

Creating a personal website or blog can bring you many benefits. So, many people do it to make their projects known. In this sense, WordPress is the most used option but not the only one. So, this post will help you to install Joomla on Debian 10

Joomla, in short, is a CMS like WordPress or many more. Thanks to Joomla you can quickly create a dynamic website like a blog. And the best thing is that you can manage it from a very efficient administration panel.

With Joomla you will have access to many templates optimized for the mobile. This will make your site practically unique and ready to use. Moreover, Joomla can be capable of many more things thanks to the available extensions.

In addition to this, there is complete user management including multiple levels of permissions.

So, let’s get started.

Install Joomla on Debian 10

Install LAMP on Debian 10

Joomla is a web application made with PHP. This means that to install it you need to have a web server running. It also requires a database manager such as MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL to store the data.

So this is the first step.

How to install LAMP on Debian10?

Also, you have to install some PHP modules for Joomla to run correctly. These packages and modules are:

openssl php-imagick php7.3-common php7.3-curl php7.3-gd php7.3-imap php7.3-intl php7.3-json php7.3-ldap php7.3-mbstring php7.3-mysql php7.3-pgsql php-smbclient php-ssh2 php7.3-sqlite3 php7.3-xml php7.3-zip

Then you can continue the post.

Create a new user and database for Joomla

Joomla processes and stores data continuously and requires a database manager. It is compatible with MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL and they are all very good. In this case, I have chosen MariaDB.

On the other hand, it is not convenient to let the root user be in charge of handling the data. This is a security problem. So let’s create a new database and user for Joomla.

So, open the MariaDB console and run:

:~$ sudo mysql -u root -p
> CREATE YOUR DATABASE joomladb;
> GRANT ALL ON joomladb.* TO 'joomlauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'joomlapss';
> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
> EXIT;

We will now proceed to download Joomla.

Download Joomla on Debian 10

At the time of writing this post, the latest stable version of Joomla is 3.9.16 which recommends the use of PHP 7.3 onwards.

So, go to the /tmp/ folder and download from there.

:~$ cd /tmp/
:~$ wget -c https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla3/3-9-16/Joomla_3-9-16-Stable-Full_Package.zip

Then create a folder for Joomla.

:~$ sudo -p mkdir /var/www/html/joomla

Then decompress it with the unzip command. If you do not have unzip, you can install it.

:~$ sudo apt install unzip
:~$ sudo unzip Joomla_3-9-16-Stable-Full_Package.zip -d /var/www/html/joomla

In order for Joomla to run smoothly, you must change the permissions of the folder where it is installed. Also, the owner of the folder must be changed.

:~$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/joomla 
:~$ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/joomla

Now we have to create a new virtual host dedicated to Joomla.

:~$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/joomla.conf

And add the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerAdmin admin@your_domain.com
       DocumentRoot /var/www/html/joomla
       ServerName your-domain.com

       <Directory /var/www/html/joomla>
             Options FollowSymlinks
             AllowOverride All
             Require all granted
       </Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Replace “your domain” with yours. As well as the other configurations. Then save the changes and close the file.

So, enable the new Virtualhost. Enable the rewrite module too and restart Apache.

:~$ sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/joomla.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/joomla.conf
:~$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
:~$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

So, complete the installation.

Install Joomla on Debian 10

Open your favorite web browser. And go to your server. You will see the following.

In this window, you have to set up the administrator account. As well as the initial site settings.

Then click on next.

In this screen, you have to configure the parameters of the database. Write the name of the database created as well as the user and the password.

So, click on Next.

On this screen, you will make the last settings of the site. You can choose whether to use a data sample or not.

Also, you will see a review of the server requirements. Check everything and click install.

If everything went well, you should see the following picture:

Next, you will see the log in page.

Next, you will see the application dashboard.

So, create a new website with Joomla. Enjoy it.

Conclusion

Joomla is a marvel of open source. With it, you can create your personal websites and even blogs. So now it’s up to you to take advantage of it after you’ve learned how to install it on a server with Debian 10.

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