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If this is your first Joomla site or your first web site, you have come to the right place. Joomla will help you get your website up and running quickly and easily.

Start off using your site by logging in using the administrator account you created when you installed Joomla!.

It's easy to get started creating your website. Knowing some of the basics will help.

What is a Content Management System?

A content management system is software that allows you to create and manage webpages easily by separating the creation of your content from the mechanics required to present it on the web.

In this site, the content is stored in a database. The look and feel are created by a template. The Joomla! software brings together the template and the content to create web pages.

Site and Administrator

Your site actually has two separate sites. The site (also called the front end) is what visitors to your site will see. The administrator (also called the back end) is only used by people managing your site. You can access the administrator by clicking the "Site Administrator" link on the "This Site" menu or by adding /administrator to the end of you domain name.

Log in to the administrator using the username and password created during the installation of Joomla!.

Logging in

To login to the front end of your site use the login form or the login menu link on the "This Site" menu. Use the user name an password that were created as part of the installation process. Once logged in you will be able to create and edit articles.

In managing your site, you will be able to create content that only logged in users are able to see.

Creating an article

Once you are logged in, a new menu will be visible. To create a new article, click on the "submit article" link on that menu.

The new article interface gives you a lot of options, but all you need to do is add a title an put something in the content area. To make it easy to find, set the state to published an put it in the Joomla! category.

Learn more

There is much more to learn about how to use Joomla! to create the web site you envision. You can learn much more at the Joomla! documentation site and on the Joomla! forums.

Congratulations! You have a Joomla! site! Joomla! makes it easy to build a website just the way you want it and keep it simple to update and maintain.

Joomla! is a flexible and powerful platform, whether you are building a small site for yourself or a huge site with hundreds of thousands of visitors. Joomla is open source, which means you can make it work just the way you want it to.

As you make your Joomla! site using the extension you will control the details of the display using parameters. Parameters control everything from whether the author's name is displayed to who can view what to the number of items shown on a list.

Default parameters for each components are changed using the Options button on the component toolbar.

Parameters can also be set on an individual item, such as an article or contact and in menu links.

If you are happy with how your site looks, it is fine to leave all of the parameters set to the defaults that were created when your site was installed. As you become more experienced with Joomla! you will use parameters more.

Joomla! 1.7 continues development of the Joomla Framework and CMS as a powerful and flexible way to bring your vision of the web to reality. With the administrator now fully MVC, the ability to control its look and the management of extensions is now complete.

Your installation includes sample data, designed to show you some of the options you have for building your website. In addition to information about Joomla! there are two sample "sites within a site" designed to help you get started with builidng your own site.

The first site is a simple site about Australian Parks. It shows how you can quickly and easily build a personal site with just the building blocks that are part of Joomla!. It includes a personal blog, weblinks, and a very simple image gallery.

The second site is slightly more complex and represents what you might do if you are building a site for a small business, in this case a Fruit Shop.

In building either style site, or something completely different, you will probably want to add extensions and either create or purchase your own template. Many Joomla! users start off by modifying the templates that come with the core distribution so that they include special images and other design elements that relate to their site's focus.

Joomla! means All Together, and it is a community of people all working and having fun together that makes Joomla! possible. Thousands of people each year participate in the Joomla! community, and we hope you will be one of them.

People with all kinds of skills, of all skill levels and from around the world are welcome to join in. Participate in the Joomla.org family of websites (the forum is a great place to start). Come to a Joomla! event. Join or start a Joomla! Users Group. Whether you are a developer, site administrator, designer, end user or fan, there are ways for you to participate and contribute.