Joomla Tutorials and Blog Posts

• You can download Akeeba Backup from the official download site: https://www.akeebabackup.com/download/official.html
• Two things to note:
  
  • There is a free core version, which is all you need for this tutorial. They also have a professional version.
  • There are Joomla 2.5 and 1.5 versions. You also need to take into account the PHP version you are running on your server. Akeeba supplies a handy chart so you can pick the correct version: https://www.akeebabackup.com/compatibility.html
• Install the Akeeba into your Joomla site.

• Go to Components > Akeeba Backup
• Click Apply these preferences to run the Configuration Wizard.
• Click the Backup Now button.

• Use the Default Backup Profile.
• Click Backup Now!
• Add a comment if you want to keep notes about this backup.

• Be patient and wait for the backup to complete. It may take a while on a large site or slow server.
• You'll see a message saying "Congratulations! The backup process has completed successfully."
• Click Administer Backup Files.

• Click the Part file name in the manager.
• You will get a warning. Browsers are not the best tool for downloading, however they work more times than not. If you use this method and have trouble restoring the file, you'll need to use an FTP file manager like Filezilla to download the file. If you need to use FTP, The actual location of the file will be /administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup. The file will have a jpa extensions and it will be date and time stamped.

• Create a folder on your server where you want to install your test site.
• Upload the archive file to the server. If it is a large site, Akeeba Backup may have divided it up into several files. Upload all of these files to your chosen folder.

Go to your server's control panel or phpMyAdmin and create a database for the site copy. Be sure you record the database connection information.

• Database host name. This is usually localhost, but you may need to double-check with your host
• Database name. The name of the database you are restoring to. If you are on a host powered by cPanel or Plesk do note that the name of the database includes an account-specific prefix. If your account name is foo and the name of your database you asked to create is bar, the full database name is foo_bar.
• Database user name. The user name you use to connect to your database. The same thing about the naming prefix on cPanel and Plesk hosts is true for the username as well.
• Database user password.
• Your preferred table name prefix. The prefix is not part of the database creation process,, it's just a matter of your personal preference. The default database table prefix in J1.5 is -- , but you may use anything you want. It's best to pick a name consisting of three to four letters and a single trailing underscore, i.e. tst_ or test_. Do not use bak_ as it is a reserved prefix for keeping copies of replaced tables when you select the Backup old tables option in the Akeeba Backup Installer later in the process.

Note: If you are restoring a site, and want to use the exact same database, you can get the information from your original site's confguration.php file. Check this tutorial for where to find the file and connection information.

Now you should be ready to unpack the archive and create the new copy of the existing site.

• Access Kickstart by visiting its URL which looks like http://localhost/mysite/kickstart.php on local hosts or http://www.yoursite.com/mysite/kickstart.php on live hosts.
• You'll see some notices. Press ESC or the link to make these notices disappear.
• Read the steps. If you have questions about any of them refer to Akeeba's documentation. The defaults will work most of the time.
• Click Start.
• Click Run the Installer.

• You will see a page which checks your server configuration. If you see any red "No"s, correct the problems before you proceed or after you're done. Many of these are warnings, not failures, and Joomla will still operate even if they are highlighted. For fixing the problems, you can check this tutorial http://www.ostraining.com/blog/joomla/installation-problems/

• Click Next at the top right, after you have filled the proper information.
• You will now see a progress bar. Click OK when it has finished.

• ll that remains is to remove the installation folder. You can do that by clicking the link on this page. Alternately you could use FTP or the file manager to delete the folder named /installation/ in the test site's Joomla root directory.

• That's it. You're done!