Joomla! 2.5 Tutorial – Step 5: Moving to Remote Servers, Part 2

Alright, finally we’re going to finish transferring Joomla! from MAMP to your remote servers at your web host.  This is advanced stuff that I’m walking you through, and it’s not as hard as you may think so bear with me.  Let’s go!

Start MAMP.  When your MAMP start page opens up, hit phpMyAdmin on the top navigation bar (we went over this in Step 2).  If you already have MAMP open but the start page isn’t up, go to MAMP and hit the “Open Start Page’ button.  What we’re going to do now is export our local Joomla! database.  From the left-hand panel, click on the database you used to install Joomla!.

phpMyAdmin MAMP Interface (database level)

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Joomla! 2.5 Tutorial – Step 4: Moving to Remote Servers, Part 1

Okay, it’s time for the exciting part!  We’re going to put our Joomla! website on the web!  Hopefully by now you’ve built your site up to be somewhat presentable, but if it’s not it might be a good idea to hold off on this step until it is.  Anyway, here we go!

Alright, I have hosting with DreamHost.com, so I’m going to show you how to create server space and SQL databases within DreamHost’s administration panel.  We’ll then move Joomla! from our local MAMP server to the remote DreamHost shared servers.  When you create an account on any web hosting site, you’ll create a username and password that will get you into your FTP and mySQL clients.  These server credentials will act like ‘root’ did for your MAMP credentials.

Creating Databases in DreamHost (click to expand)

Now, remember how we created a database on our MAMP server using phpMyAdmin?  Well, we’re going to do that now, but it’s a little different using DreamHost.  To actually create a database, you login to panel.dreamhost.com, and under ‘Goodies’ in the left-hand navigation will be ‘MySQL Databases’.  Since we’ve already created our server credentials, all you have to worry about creating here is the name of your database.  However, as I point out in the image, you should make note of your hostname, which will probably be mysql.(your-domain-here).com.  You’ll need that url to get into phpMyAdmin, so take note of it.  I suppose now is a good time to point out that DreamHost has excellent customer service, so don’t hesitate to take advantage of it if you have trouble setting up your hosting account.  I’ll also point out that one advantage of DreamHost’s affordable hosting service (which you can make even more affordable with the promo code JOOMLA25_SPP) is that you get a FREE domain registration with your first hosting plan.

Joomla! 2.5 Tutorial – Step 3: Learning How To Use Joomla!

Alright, now that we’ve installed Joomla! 2.5 on our local server, it’s time to learn the basics of Joomla!.  Keep in mind that Joomla! has many, many features, too many to go over in one post, and for now I’m only going to point you in the right direction.  There are more important things for me to cover, so I’ll give you some resources to help you learn the many features of Joomla! on your own.

Since you’re working on a local server, to access the administration panel you have to point your web browser to localhost:8888/administration AFTER starting up MAMP.  Here you enter your login credentials to get into the Joomla! backend, where all the website magic happens.  (Remember, MAMP is your server simulation, so if you close MAMP while working you will encounter access errors immediately)

Joomla! administration backend