Example of Category Blog layout (FAQs/General category)

Installation is discussed in events provided through Argonaut Training and you can visually watch the process and learn information while an installation occurs.

In broad overview, installation requires that you download Joomla!, unzip it and upload/copy the files into the directory your Web site points to, open up your browser and enter your Web site address and the installation will start.

If you prefer reading written information on the installation processes check out the Installation Manual on the Joomla!Help Site where you will also find download instructions for a PDF version too.

Argonaut Training provides Joomla Training webinars including Joomla installation. To learn more, click here.

Joomla! runs on the PHP pre-processor. PHP comes in many flavours, for a lot of operating systems. Beside PHP you will need a Web server. Joomla! is optimized for the Apache Web server, but it can run on different Web servers like Microsoft IIS it just requires additional configuration of PHP and MySQL. Joomla! also depends on a database, for this currently you can only use MySQL.

Many people know from their own experience that it's not easy to install an Apache Web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP, WAMP, and MAMP are easy to install distributions containing Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl for the Windows, Mac OSX and Linux operating systems. These packages are for localhost installations on non-public servers only.
The minimum version requirements are:

• Apache 1.x or 2.x
• PHP 4.3 or up
• MySQL 3.23 or up

For the latest minimum requirements details, see Joomla! Technical Requirements.

You indeed can change the Menu Item's Type to whatever you want, even after they have been created.

If, for instance, you want to change the Blog Section of a Menu link, go to the Control Panel->Menus Menu->[menuname]->Menu Item Manager and edit the Menu Item. Select the Change Type button and choose the new style of Menu Item Type from the available list. Thereafter, alter the Details and Parameters to reconfigure the display for the new selection as you require it.

No you don't. Versions of MySQL lower than 4.1 do not have built in UTF-8 support. However, Joomla! 1.5 has made provisions for backward compatibility and is able to use UTF-8 on older databases. Let the installer take care of all the settings and there is no need to make any changes to the database (charset, collation, or any other).