Open Source Support Desk

In this tutorial we will show you how to change Joomla 1.0 Global Configurations.

Navigate to Site > Global Configuration

1. First off, make sure configuration.php file is Writable as shown on the screen
2. Site is the first tab you will encouter
3. The first two options are Site Offline and Offline Message which allow you to switch the site to offline and display an offline message to your visitor when the site is turned off.
4. Next option is System Error Message which is the message displayed when you have an error in your site configuration like a wrong database username or password.
5. Site Name is the site title that appear in the browser.
6. Show UnAuthorized Links, when set to No, it will hide menu links in the main menu for visitors without enough credentials.
7. Allow user Registration: when set to No user registration will be disabled.
8. Use New Account Activation: when set to Yes, an activation link will be sent to the user's e-mail address. User will not be able to login without clicking on the activation link. If set to No, user will be able to login without activation.
9. Require Unique Email: When set to Yes duplicate e-mail addresses are not allowed - Useful when you need to prevent a user from using the same email address to create multiple accounts
10. Debug Site: This will display errors generated by PHP, useful for debuging Joomla scripts (components, modules, etc..)
11. WYSIWYG Editor: A list of available WYSIWYG editors you can choose from Hint: Other WYSIWYG editors are availabe as installable Mambots like fckeditor and HTMLArea3 XTD.
12. List Length: This option let you choose the default length for lists in Joomla administration. 50 is the maximum number of list items you can view in one page.
13. Favorites Site Icon: Choose the image to use as a favorites icon.

Select Locale tab

1. Language: Display a list of available languages installed. English is preinstalled with Joomla.
2. Time Offset: Define the time offset of the site, against GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). The tooltip shows you the date and time format. The drop down menu show you the different Time Offset values
3. Server Offset: If you would like to change the default timezone of your server you can do it here.
4. Country Locale: This option defines your country settings.

Select the Content tab

1. Content: In this section you will be able to define global settings for displaying or hiding elements of your content items site wide.
2. Options to toggle are Linked Titles, Read More Link, Item Rating/Voting, Author Names, Created Date and Time, Hits, PDF icon, Print icon, Email icon, Icons, Table of Contents on multi-page item, Back Button, Content Item Navigation
3. Database: this is where you store your Mambo database information including (Hostname, Username, Password Database Name) and Database Prefix - This is useful when you have one database for multipule scripts like Joomla and phpBB forum using the same database.

Next tab will be the Server tab.

1. Server tab: Displays the Absolute Path and Live Site variables which are predefined during the installation and are not configurable through this tab, however you can change the Absolute Path and Live Site from configuration.php file - This is useful when migrating a development site to production.
2. GZIP Page Compression: This option allows your web server to send compressed data if supported by your PHP installation. When enabled, this option could significantly decrease the load time of your site.
3. Login Session Lifetime: This option defines how long you are allowed to stay logged in
4. Error Reporting: This option let you select from 4 levels of error reporting (System Default - Simple - Maximum - Maximum)
5. Help Server: The URL of the server that you want to have serve your help files.
6. File Creation and Dicrectory Creation allow you to set the permission for new files and directories that you upload through Joomla. Defaults for files are 0644 and directories are 0755.

Next is the Metadata tab

1. Meta Description: This is a description of your website. Pay close attention to the words in your site description if the site ranking in search engine is important to you, most search engine will read the first 20 words or 2 sentences of your site description for easy indexing.
2. Meta Keywords: This is the keywords used by search engines to index your site, keep your keywords to under 500 characters, most search engines will ignore characters beyond that number. Keywords must be seperated with a comma or a space.
3. Show Title Meta Tag and Show Author Meta Tag are used for contents meta tags.

Next is the Mail tab

1. The Mailer options include PHP mail function which is Joomla's default mail method.
2. SMTP (User, Pass, Host) are the SMTP server login information (Host, username and password).
3. Sendmail option uses the local installaion of sendmail as the MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) for Joomla.
4. SMTP Server option uses the any SMTP server, this could be a remote server running on a different host, you must specify the hostname, username and password for the SMTP account for this option to work.

Next is the Cache tab

1. Cache files are stored at you sever local disk under cache folder for faster page serving and greater performance.
2. Select Yes to enable the built-in caching system in Joomla.
3. Cache Folder is where your cache files will reside, this is under your Joomla root by default. This folder must be writeable by your web server for the cache system to function
4. Cache Time is the maximum length of time, in seconds, for a cache file to be stored before it is refreshed.

Next is the Statistics tab

1. Statistics: When set to Yes, visitor's browser and domain statistics will be collected. This may cause a slight delay the first time a user visits the site.
2. Log Content Hits by Date: This option enables logging of hits on content items, on a daily basis. There are currently no built-in analysis routines, to complement this logging feature.
3. Warning! This will tend to collect masses of data over time.
4. Log Search Strings: This option enables logging of the search text entered by a visitor. This is a good tool that give you an insight into what your visitors are looking for at your site and what type of information they seek.

Next is the SEO tab

1. SEO- Search Engine Friendly URLs: This option is very imprortant in making your Joomla site more search engine friendly, it simply uses apache mod_rewrite engine to rename your complex URLs to simple and easy to read by human and search engines
   Note: This option only works for apache web servers
2. Dynamic Page Titles: Incorporates your page’s title and category info into your <title> tag.