Open-source CMS

Joomla, from zero to first page

A short, plain-language guide to what Joomla is, how to spin it up in a browser without installing anything, and how to publish your first article. A live public demo is embedded below.

Your private launch.joomla.org sandbox

Every visitor gets their own isolated Joomla site. The official launcher hosts a real, admin-accessible Joomla 5 for 90 days per launch. Paste the URL of your sandbox below and this page will reload it on your next visit.

Launch on launch.joomla.org
Preparing your session...

If nothing loads here, the sandbox host does not allow being framed by other sites. That is a common, sensible security setting for live admin interfaces — use the "Open in new tab" button above.

Launch the sandbox

How to put it into the sandbox

A sandbox is a temporary, disposable Joomla site hosted for you by the Joomla project itself. You do not install anything on your own computer. The walkthrough below uses launch.joomla.org — free, official, no signup.

  1. 1. Open the sandbox provider

    Click launch.joomla.org. This is the official free launcher run by the Joomla project — no account required. If the embedded window above already shows the page, use it directly.

  2. 2. Start a new site

    Click the big Launch a Joomla site button. The site queues a fresh Joomla 5 install in a hosted container.

  3. 3. Wait for provisioning

    Provisioning takes 30–90 seconds. When it finishes you get a card with two URLs: the public site (front-end) and the admin login (front-end URL + /administrator). Auto-generated username and password are shown once.

  4. 4. Log in as Super User

    Copy the credentials, open the admin URL, and log in. You land on the Control Panel. The site is a real, isolated Joomla 5 instance kept alive for 90 days — long enough for a proper try.

  5. 5. Explore the Control Panel

    Look through Content (articles, categories, media), Menus (build navigation), Components (built-in components: Contacts, Newsfeeds, Smart Search, Fields), Extensions (install add-ons), System (templates, permissions, cache, config).

  6. 6. Publish your first article

    Go to Content, Articles, New. Enter a title, a category (create Uncategorised if you need it), and body text. Set Status to Published and click Save. The article appears on the front page immediately.

  7. 7. Add a menu item that points to it

    Go to Menus, Main Menu, New. Choose Menu Item Type: Single Article, pick the article you just made, give the menu link a name, click Save. Refresh the front-end — a new menu link now points at your article.

  8. 8. Save your work before the sandbox expires

    The site is deleted after 90 days. To keep it: install Akeeba Backup from Extensions, take a full backup, download the archive, and later restore it to any Joomla host. Or export content only via System, Maintenance, Database Fix + phpMyAdmin dump.

Step-by-step guide

  1. 1. What Joomla is

    Joomla is a free, open-source content management system written in PHP. It sits between WordPress (simple blogging) and Drupal (deep, developer-heavy) — it ships with more built-in structure than WordPress (categories, access levels, multilingual, multiple templates per page) but is friendlier to non-developers than Drupal. Uses MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL.

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  2. 2. Try Joomla without installing anything

    The official launcher is launch.joomla.org. Click Launch, wait about a minute, and you get a private Joomla site with an admin login for 90 days. No credit card, no email required. A similar disposable option is demo.joomla.org.

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  3. 3. What you need to run it yourself

    PHP 8.1 or newer, a web server (Apache or Nginx), and a database (MySQL 8.0+, MariaDB 10.4+, or PostgreSQL 11+). Beginners skip installing these one by one and use XAMPP, MAMP or Laragon on Windows/Mac, or a Docker Compose stack — pre-packaged bundles that give you the whole environment in a couple of clicks.

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  4. 4. Install Joomla locally with XAMPP

    Install XAMPP from apachefriends.org, start Apache and MySQL from the XAMPP control panel. Download the latest Joomla 5 zip from downloads.joomla.org and extract it into xampp/htdocs/joomla. Create a database in phpMyAdmin at http://localhost/phpmyadmin. Visit http://localhost/joomla — the browser installer walks you through language, site name, admin account, database credentials, and lands you on the admin dashboard.

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  5. 5. First run — the Control Panel

    Log in at /administrator. The Control Panel is the home screen: a left sidebar (Content, Menus, Components, Extensions, System) plus quick-access cards. Content is where articles live. Menus is site navigation. Extensions is where you install and manage add-ons. System is where you configure the site, permissions, templates and cache.

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  6. 6. Categories, articles and modules — the core idea

    Content in Joomla is organised as Articles that belong to Categories (which can nest). Under Content, Categories you build the taxonomy first (Blog, News, Reviews), then under Content, Articles you write the entries. Anything that appears in a template region — a login form, a menu, a search box, latest articles — is a Module, added under Content, Site Modules and placed in a template position.

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  7. 7. Menus, templates and template positions

    A Joomla site can run several menus at once (Main Menu, Footer, Sidebar). Build them under Menus, All Menu Items. A template ("theme" in other CMSes) defines named positions (top-a, sidebar-left, footer-b). Assign modules to positions under Content, Site Modules. Joomla 5 ships with Cassiopeia (front-end) and Atum (admin) — both accessible under System, Templates.

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  8. 8. Users, groups and access levels

    Joomla has a fine-grained ACL. Users are put into Groups (Registered, Author, Editor, Publisher, Manager, Super User). Access Levels (Public, Registered, Special, Guest, and any custom levels you add) decide who sees what. Manage all this under Users, Groups and Users, Access Levels. Rule of thumb: never do daily editing as Super User — create an Editor account instead.

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  9. 9. Add features with extensions and templates

    Joomla extensions come in five types: Components (main features like a shop, forum, gallery), Modules (blocks you place in a region), Plugins (event hooks), Templates (themes), and Languages. The official directory is extensions.joomla.org. Install through System, Install, Extensions using either the extension's install URL or an uploaded ZIP.

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  10. 10. Publishing your site

    Deploy to any host that runs PHP + MySQL. Joomla-specialist hosts include SiteGround, Rochen, InMotion and Cloudways. To move a local site to production, install Akeeba Backup (a free extension), take a full backup archive, upload it to the new host along with the Akeeba Kickstart PHP file, run kickstart.php and it recreates the whole site on the new server. Keep core and extensions patched — updates arrive under System, Update.

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One-page cheat sheet

Local install with XAMPP

# 1. Install XAMPP, start Apache + MySQL
# 2. Download joomla_x.y.zip from downloads.joomla.org
# 3. Unzip into xampp/htdocs/joomla
# 4. Visit http://localhost/phpmyadmin, create a db
# 5. Visit http://localhost/joomla -> installer

Install with Docker Compose

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  joomla:
    image: joomla:5
    ports: ["8080:80"]
    environment:
      JOOMLA_DB_HOST: db
  db:
    image: mariadb:11
    environment: { MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: root }
# docker compose up -d, then visit :8080

CLI tasks

# From site root:
php cli/joomla.php core:update:extract
php cli/joomla.php extension:install --path=./pkg.zip
php cli/joomla.php cache:clean

Move a site with Akeeba

# 1. Install Akeeba Backup (extension)
# 2. Backup Now -> download .jpa archive
# 3. Upload archive + kickstart.php to new host
# 4. Visit /kickstart.php, follow the wizard