Once your Joomla based website is working the way you wish it to, you'll need to migrate it from your development server to your live server. Remember that a Joomla-based website consists of the Joomla files and templates plus the data stored in your RDBMS, which is usually MySql.

There are five main steps to the process:

Check Logins and Passwords

You'll need the web administrator's password for the live server and a user password for the live server's MySql installation. The MySql user must have the privileges to create a database.

Copy Your Joomla Installation

Before doing this, you may wish to clean out unused templates and such, from your development installation, just to avoid confusion later.

Then, you simply FTP the entire contents of your development server's Joomla installation to the live server's root website directory. This goes by various names, e.g. htdocs; www; httpdocs; etc.. If using a hosting service, you'll certainly find that the hosting company have provided this name as part of the introductory information.

When you do the transfer, make sure that all the directories in the development site are copied to the live server.

Copy Your Joomla Database

You must dump the Joomla database from your development server, then restore it into the live server.

Amend configuration.php on the Live Server

As it's very unlikely that the settings on your live server will be exactly the same as those on your development server, you'll need to change Joomla's config file. These are the the settings you'll probably need to amend:

  $mosConfig_host = 'www.livehost.com';             # Local name for your live host.
  $mosConfig_user = 'dblogin';                      # User name for the Joomla database.
  $mosConfig_password = 'p4ssw0rd';                 # Password for Joomla database.
  $mosConfig_db = 'joomlasite';                     # Name of the Joomla database schema.
  $mosConfig_absolute_path = '/htdocs';             # Where the Joomla base directory lives.
  $mosConfig_live_site = 'http://www.mysite.com';   # External URL of your live site.
  $mosConfig_cachepath = '/htdocs/cache';           # Path to the Joomla cache directory.

The most contentious of these settings may be $mosConfig_host, especially if your live server is hosted. If in doubt, double check with your hosting supplier, as to what this should be.

Test the New Installation

Make sure that all active pages are accessible and that everything looks the same as on the development server. This is where dual screens are very handy.

If you're permitting account creation and on-line editing, check that these processes work as you'd expect.

Finally, get several people to log in to the live site from outside your firewall to confirm that everything is running independently of the development system.