What is Article Manager
Articles are created under a category under a Section. And one article can belong to only one category which in turn can belong only to one section. In Article Manager we create articles.

How To Access Article Manager
Article Manager is accessed through Administration Control Panel or Content Menu item of top menu as shown in the picture below:

Clicking on Article Manager takes us to “Article Manager” area of administration. The Article Manager looks like the picture below:

From Article Manager

Elements of Article Manager Environment

The Article manager environment has several elements. These are listed and explained as below:

Article Manager Top Menu Portion

1. Unarchive
2. Archive
3. Publish
4. Unpublish
5. Move
6. Copy
7. Trash
8. Edit
9. New
10. Parameters
11. Help

 
Article Manager Listing Portion

1. Filter
2. Select Section
3. Select Category
4. Select Author
5. Select State
6. Title
7. Published
8. Front Page
9. Order
10. Access Level
11. Section
12. Category
13. Author
14. Date
15. Hits

16. Id

Article Manager Top Menu Portion

Archive
When you tick on one or more than one articles and then press archive button in top menu, the articles are archived, which means these are brought unavailable state. So, articles are no longer counted as part of any section or category.

Unarchive
When you tick on one or more than one articles and then press unarchive button in top menu, archived articles are unarchived, which means these are brought back to unpublished state. Then you have to republish those articles to make them accessible. Until republished, these articles are not available to the front-end portion of site.

Move/Copy
These buttons move/copy the articles selected under a particular section/category to another section/category as shown below.

Trash
When articles are selected and the Trash button is pressed, the articles are sent to trash bin. That means, if your intention was not to delete those articles, you can restore those articles. You can also delete those articles permanently.

Edit
Only one article can be edited at a time. This option allows an article to be edited. You can change anything and everything about the article from the editing interface. How to create and edit an article will be described in separate article.

New
Only one article can be created at a time. This option allows an article to be created. You can have a lot of options on the article creation interface. What it looks like while editing the article can be seen in below picture. How to create an article will be described in separate article.

Parameters
There are various parameters associated with an article in Joomla!. When you click on Parameters button, a modal window is opened and you can specify various parameters associated with the article. Modal window is one which can not be bypassed. You can not proceed without closing modal window.

One more thing to note about parameters option is that, whatever options are set here will be applied by default to all of the articles. The values set will be reflected in every article unless you specify default values for that particular article.

Article Manager Listing Portion

Rest of options are similar to Section and Category Manager. The ones which are new will be discussed here.

Select Category
This is the filtering option. Normally you see the list of all of the categories. When you select a category from this list then you see only those articles which belong to that particular category.

 
Hits
This shows the number of times an article was accessed from front-end. In other terms, it shows how many times the article was read.

That’s all for today. In day 11, I am gonna discuss about Article creation, edition and its various parameters. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

What is Category Manager

Categories are created under sections. And one category can belong only to one section. In Category Manager we create categories. In Joomla an article can belong only to a single section and single category.

How To Access Category Manager

Category Manager is accessed through Administration Control Panel or Content Menu item of top menu as shown in the picture below:

Clicking on Category Manager takes us to ” Category Manager” area of administration. The Category Manager looks like the picture below:

Elements of Category Manager Environment

The Category manager environment has several elements. These are listed and explained as below:

Category Manager Top Menu Portion

1. Publish
2. Unpublish
3. Move
4. Copy
5. Delete
6. Edit
7. New
8. Help

Category Manager Listing Portion

1. Filter
2. Select Section
3. Select State
4. Title
5. Published
6. Order
7. Access Level
8. Section
9. #Active
10. #Trash
11. Id

Category Manager Top Menu Portion

Move

When you tick on one or more than one categories and then press move button in top menu, the categories and the articles under those categories are moved to the new section, selected from move screen. This action asks you for the name of the new section where you wanna move the categories.

Category Manager Listing Portion

Rest of options are similar to Section Manager. The ones which are new will be discussed here.

Select Section

This is the filtering option. Normally you see the list of all of the categories. When you select a section from this list then you see only those categories which belong to that particular section.

Select State

This has filtering box has two options

1. Published
2. Unpublished

If you select Published then only published categories will be shown here. Selecting unpublished will show only unpublished categories.

Section

When you click on Section in the header row, the categories are sorted by Sections they belong to. Subsequent clicking results in reversing the order of sorting.

#Active

This shows the number of articles under that particular category. It does not matter whether the articles are published or not.

ID

This is the id of the category. It uniquely identifies the category. Any two categories can not have same id. So due to this you can have multiple categories with the same name.

Creating A New Category

When you want to create a new category, just access the Category Manager as explained above. Then click on New button in top menu of Category Manager. When you click on “New”, you are taken to the new screen. Now I introduce you to the elements of this screen. The screen looks like below:

Top Menu

In top menu there are four buttons:

1. Save
2. Apply
3. Close
4. Help

All of the options have been discussed in previous article under Working With Section Manager.

Details

In detail section of the screen several parameters are there. Now I am explaining these one by one.

1. Title
2. Alias
3. Published
4. Section
5. Category Order
6. Access Level
7. Image
8. Image Position
9. Description

Title

This specifies the Title of the category. It designates the name of the category.

Section

This specifies the Section under which the new category will be created. One category can be under one section only.

We will create a new category with the following details:

Title: Time Management

Alias: Leave it blank and it will be saved as: “time-management”

Published: Yes

Section: Time Management For Business Success

Access Level: Public

Image: clock.jpg

Image Position: left

Description: Blank

That’s it.

Editing A Category

To edit a category, simply click on the category title or tick the category and click on Edit button. Rest of the process is same as explained above. The picture shown below is taken while editing a present category. Remember only one category can be edited at a time.

 

Copying A Category

To copy a category, just choose the category by ticking the category and clicking on Copy. For our example I have chosen “Latest” category. The category itself and all of the articles under the category will be copied to “News” section as I have chosen. Clicking on Save will bring you back to the categories list. You see the screen below:

 

Moving A Category

To move a category, just choose the category by ticking the category and clicking on Move. For our example I have chosen “Latest” category. The category itself and all of the articles under the category “Latest” will be moved to the “News” section as I have chosen. Clicking on Save will bring you back to the categories list. You see the screen below:

That’s all for today. In day 10, I am gonna discuss about Article Manager. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

Creating A New Section

When you want to create a new section, just access the Section Manager as explained in day 7. Then click on New button in top menu of Section Manager. When you click on “New”, you are taken to the new screen. Now I introduce you to the elements of this screen. The screen looks like below:

Top Menu

In top menu there are four buttons:

1. Save
2. Apply
3. Close
4. Help

Save

When you click on “Save” button after filling out sufficient details, you are taken back to the sections list, in “Section Manager”.

Apply

When you click on “Apply” button after making any changes in the present screen, the details are saved in the database, but you remain on the same screen. You are not taken back to the sections listing until you click on Close or Save button. This is used to test anything you like while editing the section.

If you create new section and click on apply button, the title Section:[New] changes to Section:[Edit].

Close

Clicking on this button takes you back to the sections listing in Section Manger. No changes are saved.

Help

It takes you to the help screen. It’s a new pop-up screen.

Details

In detail section of the screen several parameters are there. Now I am explaining these one by one.

1. Scope
2. Title
3. Alias
4. Published
5. Order
6. Access Level
7. Image
8. Image Position
9. Description

Scope

This option specifies the scope of the content. At present its unchangeable and has value “Content”.

Title

This specifies the Title of the section. It designates the name of the section.

Alias

The alias is used when Search Engine Friendly URLs are used. If you leave this option blank, it’s automatically filled with all small alphabets. All of the spaces, underscores(_) are replaced with hyphen(-). Some other characters like & etc are also replaced. The sole purpose of aliases is for Search Engine Friendly URLs.

Published

Whether you want to publish the section or not.

Order

The order in which the section will appear in the list. New section will always come to last. It can be edited later on in list or in edit screen later on.

Access Level

You can define access level of section to registered, special or public. These terms have been explained in the day 6 article.

Image

You can choose from the images to represent the section.

Image Position

You can define, where the image should appear relative to section. The values are left, right and center.

Description

Here you can write a brief or full description of Section. Also you can include a picture in the description.

We will create a new section with the following details:

Title: Time Management For Business Success

Alias: Leave it blank and it will be saved as: “time-management-for-business-success”

Published: Yes

Access Level: Public

Image: clock.jpg

Image Position: left

Description: Blank

That’s it.

Editing A New Section

To edit a section, simply click on the section title or tick the section and click on Edit button. Rest of the process is same as explained above. The picture shown below is taken while editing a present section. Remember only one section can be edited at a time.

 

Copying A New Section

To copy a section, just choose the section by clicking title or ticking the section and clicking on Copy. For our example I have chosen “News” section. All of the categories and articles under the section “News” will be copied as “News Copy”. Clicking on Save will bring you back to the sections list. You see the screen below:

 

That’s all for today. In day 9, I am gonna discuss about Category Manager. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

What is Section Manager

Sections are the topmost entities in the grouping of the Joomla website content. Before creating any articles or categories we have to create sections, if these are not already there. Sections are created in Section Manager. In Joomla an article can belong only to a single section and single category.

How To Access Section Manager

Sections are accessed through Administration Control Panel or Content Menu item of top menu as shown in the picture below:

Clicking on Section Manager takes us to “Section Manager” area of administration. The section manager looks like the picture below:

Elements of Section Manager Environment

The section manager environment has several elements. These are listed and explained as below:

Section Manager Top Menu Portion

1. Publish
2. Unpublish
3. Copy
4. Delete
5. Edit
6. New
7. Help

Section Manager Listing Portion

1. Filter
2. Title
3. Published
4. Order
5. Access Level
6. #Categories
7. #Active
8. #Trash
9. Id

Section Manager Top Menu Portion

Publish

If you tick on sections in the listing and then click on Publish, the sections are published. From published we mean that the data categorized under the section will be displayed in the frontend.

Unpublish

Selecting sections from the listing and then clicking on Unpublish will take them off. Means the data under sections will be unpublished and will not be available for view on frontend.

Copy

When you tick on one or more than one sections and then press copy button in top menu, the categories and articles under those categories are copied to the new section. This action asks you for the name of the new section. Sections can not be copied to the existing sections through these buttons. Always new sections will be created.

Delete

Selecting one or more sections from the listing and then clicking on this button will delete those sections. But the sections should be empty. Means no categories or articles should exist under the sections to be deleted. If any categories or articles exist then you have to  delete those first.

Edit

Selecting any section and then clicking on this button, edits the information about the section. Anything and everything about the section can be edited except its id. Edit action is possible on one section at a time. If you select multiple sections and then click on edit button, the first section in the list will be edited.

New

Clicking on New button creates new section. How to carry out various actions on section will be explained in the tomorrow’s tutorial.

Help

Clicking on Help takes you to the help page defined in your Joomla configuration. By default it will take you to http://help.joomla.org

Section Manager Listing Portion

Filter

Entering anything in filter box will filter the section list as per the words in filter list. Two more buttons are there “Go” and “Reset”. Clicking on “Go” is equivalent to pressing enter and you see the filtered list of sections. Reset empties the filter box and brings you to the initial screen.

Title

Clicking on Title will sort the sections list according to Title in descending order. Clicking subsequently will reverse the order of sections according to Title.

Published

Clicking on Published will sort the the sections in the order of their publishing status. Subsequent clicking will reverse the order of sections according to Publishing status.

Order

Clicking on order will sort the sections in the order, in which these are stored in the database. Subsequent clicking will reverse the order of sections according to the section order.

Access Level

There are three types of access levels for a section. These are specified at the time of creating a section. Later on these can be changed. There are three access levels:

1. Public: The content under public status sections can be viewed by all.
2. Registered: The content under Registered status sections can only be viewed by registered users only.
3. Special: The content under Special status sections can only be viewed by special users.

Clicking on “Access Level” sorts the sections according to the access level of sections. Subsequent clicking results in reverse order sections according to the sections access level.

#Categories

This shows the number of categories under particular section. It does not matter whether the categories are published or not.

#Active

This shows the number of articles under that particular section. It does not matter whether the articles are published or not.

#Trash

This shows how many articles under a particular section have been deleted. The deleted articles are still in article trash and not deleted permanently.

ID

This is the id of the section. It uniquely identifies the section. Any two sections can not have same id. So due to this you can have multiple sections with the same name.

That’s all for today. In day 8, I am gonna discuss about creating, editing, coping sections. That will be concluding article about Joomla Sections. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

The terms often used in Joomla world are listed below:

1. Position
2. Frontend
3. Backend
4. Content
5. Extension
6. Module
7. Plugin
8. Component
9. Template
10. Parameter
11. Menu

Position

A web page is divided into several divisions. Normally each division is referred to as position in Joomla Terminology. The most common positions in Joomla website are: top, bottom, syndicate, left, right, user1, user2, user3, user4 etc.

Frontend

The frontend is referred to as the website pages which users visit and see. No logins are necessary to see the web frontend.

Backend

The backend is referred to as the administration area of the website. For example http://yourwebsite.com/administration takes you to the backend of your website.

Content

The articles added in Joomla based website are referred to as website Content. And Joomla is referred to as Content Management System. The content is also referred to as website data.

Extension

The extra softwares used to extend the core functionality of Joomla are called Extensions. Extensions are nothing but software programs written in PHP. The Modules, Components, Plugins, Templates and Languages are all different types of extensions.

Module

Modules are Joomla extensions which are used to display pieces of website content at different positions. Modules can be both of type fronted and backend.

Plugin

Plugins are used to modify system functionality without touching the original software code. These are event driven. For example if you want to display something before and after the content served by your website, you will use plugins. The type of plugins used will depend upon specific requirements.

Component

Components are also used to display the pieces of website content. The output of the content created by components is displayed in main content area. Several examples of components are available e.g content, section navigator, banner, contact etc. Components are also of two types frontend and backend.

Template

Templates are used to provide look and feel to the Joomla website. The data is provided by Joomla database. The data display format is provided by Joomla modules, components and plugins. The look and feel to that data is provided by templates. There are thousands of free Joomla templates available for download on different sites. The positions are parts of templates in which modules are displayed.

Parameter

Parameters are the input values for Joomla extensions which affect the output of these extensions. There can be any number of parameters defined for Joomla Extensions.

Menu

Menus are the means provided to navigate the Joomla website. These are also of frontend and backend types. A menu can have several menu items. Clicking on a menu item takes user directly to a particular area or page of website. Menus can have sub-menus as well.

That’s all for today. In day 7, I am gonna discuss about Section Manager in Joomla website. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

The Top Menu Components

The top menu of the Joomla Administration looks like below picture.

 

There are total 7 components in top menu:

1. Site
2. Menus
3. Content
4. Components
5. Extensions
6. Tools
7. Help

Site Menu

The Site menu looks like below picture.

It has the following items:

1. Control Panel
2. User Manager
3. Media Manager
4. Global Configuration
5. Logout

Logout

Clicking on this menu item logs you out of Joomla Administration area.

Rest of the items have been discussed in day 4 tutorial.

Menus Menu

The Menus menu looks like the picture shown below.

 

It has the following items included:

1. Menu Manager
2. Menu Trash

Menu Manager

The Menu Manager manages all of the menus created for content presentation. How to do all this stuff will be discussed in forthcoming discussions.

Menu Trash

Whatever menus or menu items you delete, go to Menu Trash. There on you can delete those permanently or restore the relevant items.

Content Menu

The Content menu looks like the picture below:

 

It has the following items:

1. Article Manager
2. Article Trash
3. Section Manager
4. Category Manager
5. Front Page Manager

Article Trash

Whichever articles you delete are sent to Article Trash. There from the deleted articles can be deleted permanently or restored.

Rest of the items have been discussed in day 4 discussion.

Components Menu

The Components menu looks like the picture as below:

 

Any components installed will be shown under this menu item. The items shown will depend upon what you have installed.

Extensions Menu

The Extensions menu looks like the picture below.

 

The items under this menu are:

1. Install/Uninstall
2. Module Manager
3. Plugin Manager
4. Template Manager
5. Language Manager

Install/Uninstall

This menu item is used to install or uninstall the Joomla extensions. The extensions can be components, modules, plugins, templates and languages.

Module Manager

This menu item is used to manage installed modules. Here you can do several operations like create, delete, copy etc. on module items.

Plugin Manager

This menu item is used to manage installed plugins. Here you can enable/disable the plugin items.

Template Manager

Here all the installed templates can be managed. You can also edit the template php and css files.

Tools Menu

The Tools menu looks like the picture below.

 

The items under this menu are listed as below:

1. Read Messages
2. Write Messages
3. Mass Mail
4. Global Check-in
5. Clean Cache

Read Messages

Here you can read the private messages sent by other registered users on the site. Mails can not be received in this box. Only private messages sent from Joomla write messages menu to other Joomla registered users only within the same site.

Write Messages

Here you can write private messages to the other registered Joomla registered members on the same site only. No mails are allowed to the outside domains from this interface.

Mass Mail

Here you can send mails to the email ids of the registered users. But mails can be sent only to groups of members and not individual members.

Global Check-in

Check-out means that the content item is locked. Check-in means that the item is unlocked. When the content item is being edited, it’s checked-out. When it’s saved then it’s checked-in. Global Check-in unlocks all of the locked content items.

Clean Cache

It cleans the cache memory. Cache is just like a buffer which is used to save the load on the site. When cache is cleaned then the buffer is emptied and fresh content is loaded from database.

Help Menu

The Help menu looks like the picture below.

 

The items under this menu are:

1. Joomla Help
2. System Info

Joomla Help

This menu item shows the links to the help available on Joomla topics on help.joomla.org.

System Info

It shows information about all of components of system. PHP version, PHP Settings, Joomla configuration file, directory permissions etc. are all listed here.

That’s all for today. In day 6, I am gonna discuss about adding new content in Joomla website. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

Logging In To Joomla Back End

Its quite simple. We have setup our website as: http://www.worldiswelcome.com/experiment, or whatever be your domain. To login to the back end enter the url as below:

http://www.worldiswelcome.com/experiment/administrator

This takes you to the back end administration login screen. The screen looks like as below:

Here initially user name is: admin

and Password is whatever you kept it: some_very_secure_words

Enter the credentials and press the button Login. This takes you to Joomla Administration Control Panel. The control panel looks as below.

Otherwise you can enter control panel by pointing your mouse to “Site”, the very first menu in Top Menus and then clicking on “Control Panel”. This picture is shown as below:
 

Checking The Version of Joomla Installation

See at the top right corner of the screen. You will see something like 1.5.8 etc. That is the version of Joomla installed on your server. This is shown as in picture below:

 

Introduction To Control Panel Buttons

In the control panel, you see 10 Big Sized Buttons on the left side. Now there is a brief description about each of these elements of Control Panel. The components are:

1. Add New Article
2. Article Manager
3. Front Page Manager
4. Section Manager
5. Category Manager
6. Media Manager
7. Menu Manager
8. Language Manager
9. User Manager
10. Global Configuration

All of the above 10 components are described one by one as below. All of the 10 components are also referred to as menu buttons.

Add New Article

This menu button takes you to the page where you can write an article for your website. In Joomla terminology an article and content are synonymous. This menu helps you to configure your article fully.

Article Manager

This menu button takes you to article manager screen. There you can do several operations like adding, editing, publishing, archiving, unarchiving etc. of your articles. Various other operations are also possible. I’ll discuss these things in the days to come.

Front Page Manager

This menu button takes you to Front Page Manager screen. Here you can decide what to put on front page of website and what not.

Section Manager

This menu button takes you to Section Manager. The Section is the top level of groups available in core Joomla. Section contains categories. The articles are arranged in categories. Here you can manager the sections of articles.

Category Manager

This menu button will take you to Category Manager. Here you manage the categories. And can arrange and re-arrange the categories, copy, move operations on categories.

Media Manager

This menu button takes you to Media Manager. There you can upload the media files and arrange those as per your needs.

Menu Manager

This menu button will take you to Menu Manager. Here you can do various operations related with your Joomla Menus.

Language Manager

This menu button takes you to Language Manger. Here you can manage languages if you are using multilingual capabilities of Joomla.

User Manager

This menu button will take you to User Manger. Here you can manger your website users.

Global Configuration

This menu button takes you to Global Configuration. Here you can manage various parameters which affect Joomla Setup globally.

The Right Side of Control Panel

On the right side of the control panel you see 5-6 links depending upon your installation and configuration. The main of this side is to give you quick view of your site. These are:

1. Logged in Users
2. Popular
3. Recent Added Articles
4. Menu Stats

Logged in Users

Clicking on this link shows you the users which are logged into your Joomla site. Both front end and back end logged in users are included.

Popular

This link shows you the 10 most popular articles of your site based upon the number of hits(No. ff times an article is seen)

Recent Added Articles

This link shows 10 recently added articles.

Menu Stats

This link shows menu item statistics. It shows which menu has how many number of menu items.

All of the above menu items deserve full page articles per item. I’ll be introducing you to all of those one by one in the days to come. In day 5, I am gonna discuss top menu items. Remember to come back and grab your tutorial session.

1. Create a directory as D:\www\experiment.

2. Extract the zip file to D:\www\experiment directory. This is shown in the picture below:

3. After you extract Joomla in D:\www\experiment, it looks like the picture as below:

4. Open the file “C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts” and make an entry like this:

127.0.0.1   localhost          www.worldiswelcome.com

You can replace worldiswelcome.com with the domain name you want for your experiment box.

5. Now, open the browser and enter the url as below:

http://localhost/experiment or http://www.worldiswelcome.com/experiment

6. The url automatically becomes:

http://www.worldiswelcome.com/experiment/installation/index.php

and you see the initial installation picture as below. Choose your language and click Next

7. Now you are at “Pre-installation Check”. It shows some parameters. The ones shown in RED color indicate some warnings. You can skip these for the time being or fix them in the files in relevant files. Click on “Next” .

8. Now you are at license agreement page. Click on “Next”, this also means that you agree to the license.

9. Now you are on page “Database Configuration”.

10. Before doing anything in step 9, you need to create a database. Open a new explorer window and enter the url: http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ or http://www.worldiswelcome.com/phpmyadmin/ Any of these will do and take you to phpmyadmin page. Here you will create database for your need. Enter the name of the database required to be created in the box under “Create New Database”.See the picture below to create database.

11. In windows in local installation, in 99% cases you have user name “root” and password is nothing. Enter the information in the original explorer screen you saw in step 9. It should look something like the picture as below. Now, click “Next”.

12. If everything was successful in step 11, then you are taken to “FTP Configuration” screen. The screen is something like the picture below. Click next on this screen. Or You can enter the desired information.

13. Now you are at “Main Configuration” Screen. It looks like the picture below. Enter your “Site Name”, email id and password. Leave rest of the parameters as such and click “Next”. You can click “Install Sample Data”, if you want to install sample data provided with Joomla installation.

14. If you don’t click “Install Sample Data”, you are presented with the below screen. Click OK.

15. Now, at last you are presented with “Finish” Screen. Here you see wording in Big Red Color. It warns you to remove installation directory. So, remove D:\www\experiment\installation directory. You also see two buttons on top right side, “Site”, “Admin”. If you click on “Site” button.

16. That’s it and you are done. Congratulations!!! You have successfully completed your first Joomla installation.

So, we’ll be discussing WAMP only.

The steps are given one by one:

1. Click on WAMP software exe file. You’ll see as the screen below:
2. Then you are presented with the path of program installation.
3. Then you are presented with the folder name where the shortcuts are placed.
4. Then you are presented with the option that whether WAMP5 should be launched at startup or not. Tick the box to ensure that it gets launched at startup.
   
5. Click on Install button to continue.
6. You see the progress bar as below:
7. Choose the directory where you want the www directory to be located. I prefer D:\www
   
8. Click on Next Button to proceed as below:
9. Next you see the name of your mail server and email id to be used as shown in two pictures below:
10. You see the pictures below at the end. Now you are ready to install joomla.

Welcome to the Day 1. Here you go…

Introduction To Joomla

Joomla is a Content Management System. It uses php as the programming language and mysql as its back-end database. All of the text content is stored in the database. Rest all of the images, module files, component files and plug-in files are all stored as files in Joomla directories. More on this later.

The word Linux will be used everywhere to make uniformity, although it may be any Unix OS.

Web Hosting

The environment needs to be set up for Joomla installation. In web world two types of hosting is available:

1. Windows based
2. Linux based

Elements of Web Hosting

Both of these have their own advantages and limitations. For any web-hosting four things are necessary:

1. Operating System, which is available as windows, Mac and Linux.
2. Web Server to serve the web-pages to client. Apache is the most popular web servers among the free available ones. It comes on windows and Linux as well.
3. Database Server. Mysql is the popular and free database system. Others are also available. But currently  Joomla supports Mysql.
4. PHP, the programming language.

LAMP and WAMP

These four elements are also referred to as LAMP and WAMP.

LAMP is Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP.

WAMP is Windows, Apache, Mysql and PHP.

WAMP is a freely available and so is LAMP.

Operating Systems

Windows can be used anyone above version Windows 2000. For Linux lots of flavors are available. The popular ones are: RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Suse, Cent OS, Ubuntu. The list is not exhaustive, others are also available.

Browsers

Almost all of the browsers are supported. But the best browser for open source based software sites like Joomla, Word-Press, OSCommerce and Zen-Cart etc. is Firefox. Firefox, I have found is really really very intelligent and adjustable to all types of templates(I’ll introduce you later on).

The others are

1. Internet Explorer
2. Safari
3. Chrome