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We will now look into the basic configuration of a Joomla! web site so we can start look into the basic configuration of a Joomla! web site so we can start using our site. A detailed discussion on a full configuration of the Joomla! site is beyond the scope of this book. Therefore, we will only be discussing the essential configuration options which we must know for implementing VirtueMart in Joomla!

First of all, you need to configure some global options for your Joomla! site. We can configure these options from the Joomla! administration panel. Go to Site | Global Configuration:

The Global Configuration screen's first tab is Site, and it has three sections: Site Settings, Metadata Settings, and SEO Settings. The first section, Site Settings, gives you the option to make the site offline, and shows a message why it is offline and for how long. You can also set the site's name in the Site Name field. You can also select a rich text editor from the Default WYSIWYG Editor drop-down list.

In the Metadata Settings sections, you can set a meta description for the site and set global site keywords. The description and keywords are helpful for search engine optimization.

In the SEO Settings section, you can specify whether Search Engine Friendly URLs will be used or not. Using SEF may help your site to be listed in the search engines. For search engine friendly URLs, you may need to enable the Apache mod_rewrite

module. If you are using Apache and want to enable SEF, select Yes in Use Apache mod_rewrite.

In the System tab (seen above), there are six sections. The System Settings section allows you to set a path to the log folder, enable web services, and set a help server. For some components, you need to set Yes in the Enable Web Services field.

In the Media Settings section, you can set what type of media files can be uploaded to your Joomla! site. Specify the allowed file extensions in the Legal Extensions (File Types) field. In the Maximum Size (in bytes) field, specify the maximum size of the file to be uploaded. Then, check the default path to the media and images folder. You can disable media uploads by selecting Yes in Restrict Uploads field. You may also specify what image formats will be allowed on your site. As you will also need to upload images for your products, check the Legal Image Extensions (File Types) field and ensure that the necessary file types are present. Here, you will find four image formats: BMP, GIF, JPG, and PNG. You can add more extensions to this field separated by commas. For each image type you add in this field, also add the corresponding MIME types in the Legal MIME Types field. If you want to use a flash file uploader, select Yes in the Enable Flash Uploader field.

In the Debug Settings section, you can enable or disable system and language debugging. For a development environment, you may enable these to see the debug messages. But for a production environment, this should be set to No.

In the Cache Settings section, you may either enable or disable caching, and can also set the cache interval. By default, caching is disabled.

In the Session Settings section, you can set the session lifetime and session handler. The default session lifetime is fifteen minutes. If you see that your sessions expire too often, check this setting and set a suitable value in Session Lifetime field.

In the Server tab, there are five sections, out of which you need to change settings in two sections:

For a faster browsing experience, you may enable GZip compression of web pages. Any browser supporting GZip compression will experience faster browsing speed as pages will be sent to the browser in a compressed form. Select Yes in the GZip Page Compression field to enable GZip compression. However, for GZip page compression to work, your php.ini configuration for the web server should enable

the php_zip extension.

In the Locale Settings section, select the appropriate time zone from the Time Zone drop-down list. The FTP Settings and Database Settings sections show the settings configured during installation. In most cases, you will not need to change these. However, you need to configure the Mail Settings section carefully. The following are the configuration options in this section:

Mailer: You can use PHP mail function, Sendmail, or SMTP Server for sending emails from your Joomla! site. This same mailer will be used by other components of Joomla! including VirtueMart.

Mail from: You need to provide an email address from where the mail will be sent. By default, the administrator's email address is used here.

From Name: This will be the name which is shown in the From field in an email. By default, the site name is displayed in this field.

Sendmail Path: If you choose Sendmail in the Mailer field, you will need to specify the sendmail path in this field. The default value is /usr/sbin/ sendmail, which is appropriate for most Linux servers. You can get this path from your host provider.

SMTP Authentication: If you select SMTP Server as a transport method in the Mailer field, you will need to configure this and the following fields. If your SMTP server requires authentication, then select Yes in this field. If you select Yes in this field, you also need to configure the username and password in the next two fields.

SMTP Username: Type the username to be used to login to the SMTP server through which your emails will be sent.

SMTP Password: Type the password for the above username which resides on the SMTP server.

SMTP Host: Type the name of the SMTP server through which your emails will be sent, for example, smtp.bdosn.org.

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