No problem. The quickstart is a complete Joomla install but with the difference that it includes all the modules and data as shown in the JA demos. It is basically a complete site already setup to work and makes it a lot easier for users to start a new site.
In your case you already have a site so quite rightly do not want to undo all that work simply to get a module setup correctly. So you could read the docs where all the setup is listed or install the quickstart on your desktop machine so you can compare settings. For me that is the better option and will only take a few minutes to do.
First install WAMP on your desktop machine – http://www.wampserver.com/en/
Then create a directory in the www folder of your WAMP install and in that folder put the JA Social quickstart files (unzip them directly to this folder). When you then browse to localhost in your browser you will be presented with a list of websites installed on your WAMP setup. You will only have the one for now but you can setup as many as you wish simply by creating a new folder for each. Click on that website and you will see the normal Joomla installer. If you go through it and make sure you install the sample data at the end you will have an exact copy of the JA Social demo on your desktop machine that you can play with.
You will have to setup a few things on your WAMP install before the first run such as the mysql password and maybe ticking the php_curl item in one of the menu settings (php extensions) but that only takes a couple of minutes and is well worth the effort.
You can then use akeeba backup to take a copy of your live site and run that on your desktop so you can test anything you want locally before messing up your live site. It really is worth the effort.
Phill 13 years, 3 months ago.
