Introducing JSN Epic FAQs

My MySQL database does not support UTF-8. Do I have a problem?

No you don't. Versions of MySQL lower than 4.1 do not have built in UTF-8 support. However, Joomla! 1.5 has made provisions for backward compatibility and is able to use UTF-8 on older databases. Let the installer take care of all the settings and there is no need to make any changes to the database (charset, collation, or any other).

What are the requirements to run Joomla! 1.5?

Joomla! runs on the PHP pre-processor. PHP comes in many flavours, for a lot of operating systems. Beside PHP you will need a Web server. Joomla! is optimized for the Apache Web server, but it can run on different Web servers like Microsoft IIS it just requires additional configuration of PHP and MySQL. Joomla! also depends on a database, for this currently you can only use MySQL.

Many people know from their own experience that it's not easy to install an Apache Web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP, WAMP, and MAMP are easy to install distributions containing Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl for the Windows, Mac OSX and Linux operating systems. These packages are for localhost installations on non-public servers only.
The minimum version requirements are:
  • Apache 1.x or 2.x
  • PHP 4.3 or up
  • MySQL 3.23 or up
For the latest minimum requirements details, see Joomla! Technical Requirements.

What happened to the locale setting?

This is now defined in the Language [lang].xml file in the Language metadata settings. If you are having locale problems such as dates do not appear in your language for example, you might want to check/edit the entries in the locale tag. Note that multiple locale strings can be set and the host will usually accept the first one recognised.
  • New to Joomla!
    Questions for new users of Joomla!
  • Current Users
    Questions that users migrating to Joomla! 1.5 are likely to raise
  • General
    General questions about the Joomla! CMS
  • Languages
    Questions related to localisation and languages