Open Source Varsity

Lesson 1 - Joomla Global Configuration

Description
The Global Configuration screen allows you to configure the Joomla site with your personal settings.
You can access the global configuration settings from the control panel or from the menu Site -> Global
Configuration as shown in Digram1.

Diagram1

The main configuration file for your Joomla 1.5.X installation under the site tab is as shown in Diagram2.
There are three tabs: Site, System and Server. The Site settings directly relate to your site, the system is user
registration, etc and the Server settings are some of the settings you can set up that related to the web server that
your Joomla site is hosted on.

SITE
There are some settings under the Site tab as shown in Diagram2.

Site Settings
Site Offline: This setting will turn your site offline and users will not be able to access your main site. Only
Administrators will be able to see the site. This is useful if you are doing any major maintenance on your site.
When visitors come to your site they will see a message that states: This site is down for maintenance. Please
check back again soon. This information can be changed by changing the next parameter ‘Offline Message’ of
site settings. The default setting is No.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

1
 Open Source Varsity
Offline Message: You can enter here a little message, to be displayed on site, for your visitors when your
website is offline. This helps when announcing launch dates and other information.
Site Name: This is the name of the site that you have entered during the installation steps of Joomla1.5 (step6:
Main Configuration). Here, you can change the parameter to whatever best reflects your online presence.

Default WYSIWYG Editor: WYSIWYG stands for”What you see is what you get”. By default, TinyMCE is
the default editor installed. It is used whenever an editor area is loaded for e.g. when creating articles and other
content.

List Length: This refers only to users that have access to the administration panel. This is used to control the
number of items you can see at one time when viewing a thing like article lists. This can also be controlled while
viewing the lists. For e.g.If you have 40 article pages then you will have two pages because the default list length
is 20. You can change this anywhere from 5 to 100 in increments of 5. It's a global setting that applies to all lists in
the administration panel including modules, plugins, templates etc. By default, this is set to 20.
Feed Length: This is the default number of items that will be displayed in your website's feeds. If you set this to
5, then all feeds will have only 5 articles in them, no matter how many you actually have in your Category of
articles.
Feed Email: This will apply only to Atom and RSS feeds that have the author e-mail option in them. You can set
this to either Author E-mail to use each author email in the newsfeed or Site E-mail to include the site 'Mail from'
email address for each article.

Metadata Settings
Global Site Meta Description: This is the description of the site which is indexed by search engine spiders
or, in other words, this is used as the global site description in your meta data. This can be modified at the article
level as well.
Global Site Meta Keywords: These keywords describe the site and are the basis for improving the ability of
search engine spider ability to index the site or in other words this is used as the global site keywords in your
meta data. This can be modified at the article level as well.
Show Title Meta Tag: If set to yes, then it shows the Meta information of each article. This Meta information
is used by search engine spiders when indexing the site. Each article can have its own Meta Data information (set
under the Metadata Information pane when creating or editing an article).

Show Author Meta Tag: If set to yes, then it shows the Author Meta information for articles and is used by
search engine spiders when indexing the site.

SEO Settings
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Friendly URLs: When set to Yes, URLs are rewritten to be more friendly for search engine
spiders. For example, the URL: www.example.com/index2.php?option=com_content&view=etc..., would turn into:
www.example.com/alias. Most of the items created in Joomla have an Alias box where a search engine friendly URL
can be inserted. The default setting is No.

Use Apache mod_rewrite: When set to Yes, Joomla will use the mod_rewrite settings of Apache when creating
search engine friendly URLs. You must use the .htaccess file provided with Joomla in order to use this setting. To
use this file, rename the htaccess.txt file (found in the root directory) to .htaccess. By default, this setting is set to
No.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

2
 Open Source Varsity
Add suffix to URLs: If set to yes, then .html will be added at the end of every URL. Which in turn transform
your URLs from www.example.com/article-name to www.example.com/article-name.html. The default setting
is No.

Diagram2

SYSTEM
There are some settings under the System tab as shown in Diagram3.
System Settings
Secret Word: This code is generated when Joomla is first installed and is not changeable. It is used internally by
Joomla for security purposes.
You should change this to ensure that your website is secure. In order to change the Secret Word go to your
JoomlaRoot/ and open configuration.php in an editor, go to line 14 and edit this line: var $secret =
'feM9ufFYpsfKvWqd'; -> Change the feM9ufFYpsfKvWqd code to something else.

Path to Log folder: This shows you where the log file is located on your server. The Joomla! installer will
automatically fill in this folder. You can also change the location to keep your logs private. To do this, rename the
logs folder to something else.

Enable Web Services: This enables RPC communications on your site. Many third party extensions require
this to be enabled to work properly.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

3
 Open Source Varsity
Help Server: The place Joomla looks for help information when you click the Help button usually located on the
top - right of the Administrator page. By default, it uses Joomla!'s main help site. This setting also determines
what language will be used.

User Settings
Allow User Registration: This option, if set to yes, it allows users to register on your site and gain access to
functionalities that require a registered user group status. The default setting is Yes.

New User Registration Type: If Allow User Registration is set to Yes, then this setting will determine the
default user group for new users registering on your website. The default setting is Registered.

New User Account Activation: If you set this to yes, your new registrations will require validation. This
means that when a user registers on your site, an e-mail will be sent, containing a link to a web address, to the e-
mail address used for the registration in order to confirm the validity of the information entered in the
registration form. The user must follow this link to activate his/her account. By default, this setting is set to Yes.

Front-end User Parameters: Joomla! 1.5 has a front-end editing option and other features dedicated to the
Front-end user. You can set this to yes if you want your users to have access Front-end options. The default
setting is Show.

Media Settings
Legal Extensions (File Types): This allows you to control the extensions of files that can be uploaded via the
media manager. This can help from having harmful files uploaded to your site. By default, when Joomla is
installed, basic image and document files are allowed.

Maximum Size: This allows you to set a maximum size for uploads. PHP also has it's own setting for the
maximum size. It is set by default to 10 MB.

Path to Media Folder: The path where non-image media files are located, including videos and document
files. You can create a new folder to use with the Media Manager and enter the path to that folder here but do not
delete or rename the existing "<Joomla! home>/images" folder on your server otherwise it will cause an error. The
default is "<Joomla! home>/images".

Path to Image Folder: The path where images are stored. You can create a new folder to use with the Media
Manager and enter the path to that folder here. If you want to access this folder from the Media Manager, either
use the default value or make the new folder a sub-folder of the Media Manager folder but do not delete or rename
the existing "images/stories" folder on your server otherwise it will cause an error. The default is "<Joomla!
home>/images/stories".

Restrict Uploads: This restricts upload privileges to just images for users that have a lower user group than
Manager. You should set this to ‘yes’ because it allows you to safely choose trustworthy Managers, Publishers
and Administrators for your website. The default setting is Yes.

Minimum User Level for Media Manager: This sets minimum user level in order to gain access to the
Media Manager in the front end. Users in this group or higher groups will be able to access the Media Manager.

Check MIME Types: This allows you to control if Joomla should check the MIME types of files uploaded via
the media manager. The default setting is Yes.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

4
 Open Source Varsity
Legal Image Extensions (File Types): This allows you to limit the types of images that can be uploaded. It
operates by checking the file image headers. By default, Joomla only allows bmp, gif, jpg, png.

Ignored Extensions: This sets which extensions are ignored for MIME type checking and restricts uploads. By
default, no extensions are ignored.

Legal MIME Types: This sets the list of legal MIME types for uploads. By default, Joomla automatically
includes some standard file types but, this setting is active only if you have Check MIME Types set to ‘Yes’.

Illegal MIME Types: This sets the list of illegal MIME types for uploads. By default, Joomla automatically
blocks HTML MIME types but, that are not allowed to be uploaded if "Check MIME Types" is enabled.

Enable Flash Uploader: This is set to ‘Yes’ by default. Change it to ‘No’ because it's not reliable and depends
a lot on what version of Flash Player you have installed. So, most of the times it might not work.

Debug Settings
Debug System: This controls whether or not to display system debug messages. When set to Yes, this tool will
provide diagnostic information, language translations, and SQL errors. If any such issues or errors occur, they
will be displayed at the bottom of each page, in both the front-end and back-end.
Note: This should be used only in the testing and building phases.

Debug Language: This controls whether or not to display language debug messages. If this is set to ‘Yes’ and
Debug System to ‘No’, you will not get any relevant information to help you fix potential errors on your website.

Cache Settings
Cache: This setting sets whether site caching is enabled or not. If this is set to ‘Yes’, it will create static files for
your website to reduce the load on your MySQL database. It is useful if you have a lot of visitors on your website.
It ensures faster loading time, and faster navigation. By default, setting is No.

Cache Time: This setting sets the maximum length of time (in minutes) for a cache file to be stored before it is
refreshed. The default setting is 15 minutes.

Cache Handler: This allows you to control how the caching files are stored. This gives you only one option of
File Handler.

Session Settings
Session Lifetime: This applies to users and administrators. It allows you to control how long a session should
last. After this period of time users are logged out. The default setting is 15 minutes.

Session Handler: This setting sets how the session should be handled once a user connects and logs into the
site. The default setting is set to Database.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

5
 Open Source Varsity

Diagram3

SERVER
There are some settings under the Server tab as shown in Diagram4.
Server Settings
Path to Temp-folder: This is the path to the temp folder which is used to store temporary files. This is filled in
by default when Joomla is installed. You can modify this location and specify a different one.

GZIP Page Compression: GZIP can reduce the time it takes pages to download by compressing the output
before it's downloaded. At the same time, it can increase the load your site generates by needing to compress data
on every page load. The default setting is No.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

6
 Open Source Varsity
Error Reporting: You can change the amount of error reporting that Joomla does. In production sites, it's
highly recommended to have it as low as possible. Crackers can use the information produced by errors to find
holes into your site. There are four options for this feature: System default, None, Simple and Maximum. During
development stage, you can turn it to maximum after that you should turn it back to system default. By default,
the setting is System Default.

Force SSL: This will force SSL (Secure Socket Layer) on certain areas of your website. Access to those areas will
be only by using the https:// prefix but turn this on only if your server supports such an option. By default, the
setting is None.

Locale Settings
Time Zone: This tool sets the current date and time. The set time should be where the site's server is located.
You can change the default time zone for your site. The default setting is (UTC 00:00) Western Europe Time,
London, Lisbon, Casablanca.

FTP Settings
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Most of these settings are set during the initial Joomla installation.
Enable FTP: This setting tells Joomla to use its built-in FTP function instead of the normal upload process used
by PHP.

FTP Host: You can enter the name of the ftp host.

FTP Port: You can specify the FTP port. By default, the value in Joomla! Global Configuration is 21.

FTP Username: You can enter the FTP Username provided by your hosting provider, the same username you
use to access your ftp account.

FTP Password: You can enter the FTP Password provided by your hosting provider, the same password you
use to access your ftp account.

FTP Root: You can enter here the physical location of where your website resides on the server. If you are not
sure of what that is, you can contact you host provider.

Database Settings
Database Type: The type of database to be used. The default setting is mysql.

Hostname: The hostname where the database is located. It is typically set to localhost for most servers. It is
possible for the hostname to be located on a different server all together.

Username: The mysql username to access the database.

Database: The name of the database that stores all fields and tables for Joomla 1.5.

Database Prefix: The prefix that is used before the actual table's name. This allows you to have multiple
Joomla installations in the same database. The default setting is jos_, but this can be changed during initial setup
of Joomla.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

7
 Open Source Varsity
Mail Settings
Mail Settings: Joomla has 3 ways to send your site e-mails.
PHP Mail This uses the mail function that is built into PHP and is the simplest way of mailing.
SMTP This uses the site's SMTP server and is the most secure way of mailing but it requires entering your SMTP
login details.
Sendmail This uses the Sendmail program, which is typically used when creating HTML email forms but it
requires entering your Sendmail path to be correct.
The default setting is PHP Mail Function.

Mail from: The email address used by Joomla to send site email.

From Name: The name Joomla will use when sending site emails to the users. By this, the users will easily
identify all the e-mails from you. By default, Joomla uses the site name during the initial setup.

Sendmail Path: The path where the Sendmail program is located. This is typically filled in by Joomla during
the initial setup. This path is only used if Mailer is set to Sendmail.

SMTP Authentication: If the SMTP server requires authentication to send mail, set this to Yes. Otherwise
leave it at No. This is only used if Mailer is set to Sendmail.

SMTP Username: The username to use for access to the SMTP host. This is only used if Mailer is set to
Sendmail.

SMTP Password: The password to use for access to the SMTP host. This is only used if Mailer is set to
Sendmail.

SMTP Host: The SMTP address to use when sending mail. This is only used if Mailer is set to Sendmail.

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

8
 Open Source Varsity

Diagram4

To make a site in offline mode

After logging in to the Joomla administrative panel, click on the Global Configuration in the control panel as
shown in Diagram5 in order to access the global settings of joomla1.5.

Diagram5

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

9
 Open Source Varsity
By default, the setting under the site tab is opened as shown in Diagram6.
Set the Site Offline parameter to ‘Yes’.
Click on the Save icon at the top-right hand corner.

Diagram6

Now, the site is set offline.

The successful updation of global configuration is displayed as shown in Diagram7.

Diagram7

© Open Source Varsity. All Rights Reserved.

10