Joomla Install via SVN = Faster install

Posted on 12. Dec, 2008 by Rick in Blog

A lot of people install Joomla by downloading the zip file with all the Joomla files and then following that by uploading it to their server. This, of course, takes extra time as uploading thousands of files is a little laborious. Well, if you can learn to do this via SVN, it will speed your install process to an almost instant upload to your server (well…download….technically).

Connecting via SSH

Start by opening the command line (i.e. Terminal) and typing “ssh -l usernamehere addresshere“.

The “-l” stands for setting the username of the site, which immediately after the “-l“, the username must be declared. After the username is declared, then the address for what you are trying to connect to must be entered.

upon hitting “enter”, it will ask for the password of the domain, once you enter that, you will be connected.

Downloading Joomla via SVN

There are some simple commads you can do to find out where you are at. Typing “ls” will list all the directories. Typing “cd” and then the directory name will change to that directory (placing you inside that directory).

To use Hostmysite.com as an example, the web folder is in the “htdocs”. So you would type “cd htdocs” to switch to that folder, placing you in that directory; the directory where we want to upload Joomla.

After arriving in the directory you want to upload Joomla, checking out Joomla to that diretory is simple by entering this command:

svn export --force --username anonymous http://joomlacode.org/svn/joomla/development/releases/1.5 .

This will then place to the folder on the server, the latest Joomla release. NOTE that Joomla will ask for a password…..there is none so just hit enter. Observe the “dot” at the end (which translates to export to “here” please). If you miss that dot, the export will go into a subdirectory. We use the force option to ensure that Subversion exports over the top of the existing directories (note that force doesn’t have to be used necessarily, only if something existent is in the folder you are exporting to).

Tags: Joomla install, SVN, Terminal