Using the UNIFORM server for Joomla development

Everybody knows that it is much easier to develop a website on a local server first before uploading it to the actual web server. The turnaround time for testing and fixing is just that much quicker using a local server.

Typically one would not really set up an actual Linux server to work on, although that is certainly possible and lots of companies do exactly that, but we prefer to make use of what is commonly known as a WAMP server - a portable, standalone application that combines Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl. A WAMP server therefore is like running a fully fledged Apache server on your Microsoft Windows PC.

There are various popular options available for running a local Apache server on your PC - XAMPP is very popular and when you develop in Joomla, JSAS is a standalone Joomla server that can be downloaded from http://www.jsasonline.com. You just need to realise however that JSAS is not really free any more since you now need to sign up for a charter membership to download the latest version.  

I have never managed to get as far as trying JSAS though, since someone introduced me to the UNIFORM server a couple of years ago and that is all that we have been using since.

The advantages of using the Uniform server are:

• It truly is portable. The whole server can be zipped and unzipped and it runs right from that specific location, whether from your desktop, a flash drive, C drive, D drive - anywhere.


• It has a small footprint. The whole Uniform server zip file these days is below 15MB. This is excluding your Joomla installation though, which migh push it up to about 50MB


• It is really, really easy to install and run. There is absolutely nothing to do, just unzip and double-click on Disk Start.vbs. Select the default settings, say 'Yes', you do want to start MySQL and the server will start. Please note that the one sticking point that you might run into (but this is valid for almost all of the localhost servers), and that is that port 80 needs to be open. Often Skype has a setting to use port 80 for connecting, so if your uniform server is not running, check your Skype settings and untick the option where it wants to use Port 80 as an alternative for connecting. Vista users will also have a problem with the security controls built into Vista. There is a nice guideline for solving this on the JSAS site which also applies to the Uniform server. You can read about it here:http://www.jsasonline.com/vista-setup.html


• It is easy to duplicate and backup. We have a standard Joomla installation of the Uniform server that we just clone to get started with a new Joomla website. You can load your favourite Joomla components into your 'basic' version. Just make a copy of that whole folder, rename it and you have a new instance of the server running. 

When you are finished building your site, the next step is to upload from your Uniform server to the web server on the Internet. Typically you would require access to your domain control panel, as well as an FTP client.

Melaina Gross, from Cantaloupe web design, contributed this tutorial on how to upload your local Joomla installation. The tutorial was developed for a Joomla 1.0.x installation, but all the steps are still exactly the same, except for updating your configuration.php file, since the structure of the file has changed between Joomla 1.0.x and 1.5.x

http://www.tm4y.co.za/joomla-tutorials/upload-your-joomla-local-installation.html 

The tutorial has now been updated to include the configuration settings for the configuration.php file for Joomla 1.5.x.

Download Uniform server with Joomla 1.5.10 pre-installed by clicking here.

Please note, the username and password for this Joomla installation is admin/password

Please change this after your installation to a production server - don't blame me if your site gets hacked due to an insecure username and password!