When I was new to Joomla, I spent days trying to figure out how to upload my local Joomla site onto my GoDaddy host server. When I called GoDaddy support, they told me they didn’t support Joomla, which left me on my own. I searched all over the internet and didn’t find the answers I was looking for, so I went out and spent about $70 on Joomla for Dummies and Joomla! Visual Quickstart Guide, hoping I could figure out how to accomplish this one simple task. Nada. There were no good, clear, concise, complete how-to guides for getting this done. So I decided I would write one. (Real quick, before we proceed, let me say I’m so excited about these guys and am using them for all my client’s SEO needs. Find out how to RANK YOUR SITE #1 ON GOOGLE for a one time set-up fee + $297 PER MONTH. After all, your web site won’t do you any good if no one can find it! Call me at 214-208-1954 if you’re interested in special pricing.)
On with the tutorial. Here’s how to do it:
PART ONE: INSTALL JOOMLAPACK AND BACK UP YOUR LOCAL SITE
- Go to http://www.joomlapack.net/download/JoomlaPack-Components-download.html and download the latest version of JoomlaPack.
- Install JoomlaPack to your localhost site in the same way you would install any other component. (Go to Extensions > Install/Uninstall, browse to your downloaded file, and click the button that says “Upload File and Install.”)
- Go to Components > JoomlaPack > and click “Back Up Now.” Make sure you don’t navigate away from that screen until you see a message that says “Backup is Complete.
- Go to Components > JoomlaPack > Administer Backup Files. Click the checkbox next to the backup you just made. Click Download and save the file in a convenient location. It will have a .jpa file extension on the end of it.
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PART TWO: DOWNLOAD KICKSTART
- Go to http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/jpack/frs/?action=FrsReleaseView&release_id=10315. There you will find a page with release information and a bunch of tabs labeled “Notes, Changes, Files,” etc. Click on the “Files” tab, and click on the link to download the Kickstart Zip file.
- Unzip the Kickstart file and move the php script file to the same folder where you put your Joomla local site backup.
PART THREE: TAKE YOUR LOCAL JOOMLA SITE LIVE ON THE INTERNET
- 1. Go to GoDaddy.com and log in.
- On the left navigation bar under “My Products,” Click on “Hosting.”
- Put a check in the box next to the domain you’re trying to set up, and click “Manage Account.” This should bring up the Hosting Control Center.
- Click on the Databases bar.
- Click on MySQL.
- Click “Create Database.”
- Write down the Host Name, the database name, and your username and password. (You have to click on the little pencil icon to the right of your database before you can see all the relevant information. You may have to wait awhile for GoDaddy to create the database before you can see the hostname. Be patient.)
- FTP your .jpa backup file and kickstart.php to the root folder of your web host directory using whatever FTP client you prefer. (I prefer Dreamweaver, but I hear Filezilla is good and free.)
- Open up a web browser and type in http://www.substitute-your-domain-here.com/kickstart.php.
- At the bottom of the screen, under FTP options, input the username and password you used to FTP the .jpa and kickstart files to your site in step 8. Leave everything else alone.
- Click “Start.” Wait patiently while JoomlaPack Kickstart populates your site. WHEN IT IS FINISHED, DO NOT CLOSE THE WINDOW. Follow the directions on your screen and open a new window to complete the installation.
- In the new window, select your language and hit “Next.”
- Hit “Next” again if your installation check looks okay (comes back with all green Yeses”).
- Hit “Next” again to agree to the GNU General Public License.
- On the “Database Configuration” screen under basic settings, do the following:a. Leave the Database type set to MySQL.b. Replace the Host Name with the one GoDaddy provided you with when you set up the database.c. Delete “root” and replace it with the username you chose when you set up the database.d. Replace the password with the password you created when you set up the database.e. Fill in the Database Name with the name of the database you created when you set up the database.
- You will get a congratulations screen. Hit “Next.”
- Enter the FTP information you used to FTP the .jpa and kickstart.php files to your site in step 8. Click “Next.”
- Confirm your email and password information. Hit “Next” to reach another congratulations screen.
- Go back to the JoomlaPack Kickstart window that warned you not to close it until you had finished restoring your site.
- Click the “here” link where it says, “When you have finished restoring your site please click here to activate your .htaccess,” etc.
- You see a screen that says: ALL DONE! Kickstart has finished.
- CONGRATULATIONS! After all that, your site is finally live. Whew!
Posted in Joomla
61 Responses to “How to Use AkeebaBackup (Joomlapack) and Kickstart to Upload Your Local Joomla Site to a GoDaddy Server / Hosting Account”
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WOW! What a tutorial! This is exactly what I was looking for, and it worked like a charm.
Thanks for taking the time to put together such a great step-by-step explanation!
You saved my life… nothing worked before until i found this tutorial. Thanks a million.
I agree with these guys above, these are excellent guidelines.
I had also struggled for sometime but thanks to this info I have now got it sorted.
I’m having a little bit of trouble viewing your site in Firefox, but it may just be my computer. Apart from that, I love your site. I plan on surfing around and reading some more posts!
Training An Older Dog
thank a million mate
great tutorial, straight to the point
I actually have a question. When I access kickstart.php through my browser, I do not see the .jpa file to be selected for the installation. The combo box is empty. Any ideas?
Many thanks to Eddy Lehrer, who alerted me to a missing step that may fix your problem. He wrote:
Please note that there is a step left out in the instructions. Joomlapack must be configured to to create a .jpa file before creating the backup file, In the administration area, under Components>> JoomlaPack >> Configuration, click on the “advanced” tab and change the setting for “archiver engine” to “JPA JoomlaPack Archive”. Then click save.
I have been meaning to update the instructions to reflect this step, but haven’t had a chance to do it yet. Does this solve your problem?
Big thanks. Heaps easier than reading the JoomlaPack User guide…
Excellent! I’ve shared this already!
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[...] While I did just post a blog about a day ago, it is always exciting for me to share some of my latest discoveries-especially when it is a pressing issue that has taken me awhile to figure out. Today, I learned how to successfully transfer a Joomla! site from the local server to the remote server using GoDaddy. This will be an adventure, if things are different with my flower shoppe client who is using Power Web Connect, so I’m not sure how that will go. Anyway, after much agony of trying different solutions and searching, I came across a great website that had the one answer I had been searching for. This is the site on how to use Joomlapack to transfer from the local to remote host. [...]
Thanks, this blog helped me in solving some problems with the latest release, Why do they often leave out vital information when they release a new version? It may be minor to them but not for us! I’m sure we’re not alone either.
Thank you thank you thank you.
Hey, what a fabulous tutorial. Right on point and worked great. Any other method will waste days of your time. Stick to simple. This is even better than the developer’s site: akeebabackup.com. Recommend: updating some tutorial descriptions as they are a little outdated, ie. “select your language”, “GNU license”, etc.
Again, what a great instructional!!
What can i say. But a big thank you!!!. If you were a girl i’d kiss you and if not a big handshake. I was looking for some resource with the info needed all in one. Even the akeeba backup pdf helpfile was not this helpful.
Now with your help in no more than 30mins, i had http://www.amoracollections/testenvironment up for my client to see.
Thank you again. I would refer to this site from mine.
So i’ve reached step 11. I click start but nothing happens, I waited for an hour but the loading bar doesn’t move.
Am I missing something? Do I need to upload all my JOOMLA folders first (via FTP) on my hosting server and then run the kickstart?
Or do I upload kickstart and the Joomla Backup file on an empty folder on my hosting server?
Thx
Done !
For some reason I could only proceed using the DIRECT option in STEP 10/11 instead of using FTP.
Joomla site is now uploaded.
Cheers
I emailed Jenn about a year ago to say I thought this post on Go Daddy Joomla hosting was extremly well written and incredibly easy and simple to follow (I’m male, blond and Irish – so everything HAS to be simple) and then I needed to upload another site and found that Jenn had updated her article to reflect some of the Go Daddy procedural changes – of course it worked wonderfully. It’s people like Jenn who make the Internet the amazing place it is. Thanks! ohhh anyone able to tell me how to upload a second site to the same Go Daddy hosting account? Presumably I just upload the second wite to the root and follow the above.
kia kaha
Stan
All went well untill i typed in the following
http://www.cemeteryurn.com/kickstart.php.
and the page could not be found.
Does anyone know what i can do to fix it?
When I click ‘Start’ on the kickstart page, I keep getting the message: Could not create installation/js folder
Anyone know why?
Thank you
It may be that when you did the initial Joomlapack backup on the local site, it didn’t save the package as a .jpa file. Joomlapack used to save as a .jpa file by default, but now I think you have to go into settings and select that before you do the initial backup. Try going back into your Joomlapack settings, make sure it is set to export a .jpa file, and try again. If that doesn’t work, I’m not quite sure what to tell you next.
@Gill666: Log into your web server and make sure that the file kickstart.php is located in the root (top level) folder of your web server. Can you see it there?
Great post and thanks for sharing! It’s nice to find something really useful sometimes.
I have followed the above instructions. Everything goes smoothly, until the very last step. All the graphics are not showing, and the site does not look right. You can check it out here: http://sitacupuncture.com/
What could possibly be the problem?
In addition, when I tried to access the administrator page, the Joomla menu does not work. Did I miss something? Do I need to install Joomla in my hosting account first before starting Kickstart?
I have figured out the foolish mistake I made. It’s the FTP absolute path that I messed up. It’s running now. Thanks!
Thanks for your reply, admin. Sorry I didn’t respond sooner. My files were being saved as .jpa files. Any other things to check?
No problem. Hmmm. Not sure. Found this info:
http://www.akeebabackup.com/forum/18833/topic.html
But that’s the only other thing I’ve found on that error. I’m sorry–I don’t know!
I had already tried all Kickstart combinations to no avail – thanks for trying, anyway. Oh, I hate to ask this, but do I need to have GoDaddy install Joomla first, or does JoomlaPack take care of that?
Thanks again.
Nope, leave the GoDaddy space empty. JoomlaPack will handle the install.
I found my problem – I needed to unlock the editing on the root folder, and everything went smoothly after that. You,ve been wonderful. One more question: I used to go to
http://localhost/joomla15/administrator/index.php
on my computer to work on the website through the Joomla control panel. How do I access that now to work on the site?
Ah ha! Now, to work on the site, go to http://www.yourdomain.com/administrator and type in your login credentials. Then you can work online just like you did on your local machine.
Oh, you are just awesome! If I had given that some serious thought, I probably would have figured it out on my own (in a few days). Thank you so much for all your help and patience…
It takes forever to edit on GoDaddy, and even the website seems slow to generate pages – is it just me?
Nope, it’s not just you. You can always expect editing online to be slower than editing locally, but frankly, GoDaddy sucks. Their shared hosting servers are VERY overburdened. This site is still hosted with them, but I was able to speed it up some by upgrading to a virtual dedicated IP. Even then, it was still slow, so I converted to WordPress.
I advise all my clients to host with HostGator now. The Joomla sites I have with them all run much faster than anything I’ve tried to host on GoDaddy. All web hosting companies are definitely NOT created equal.
For that matter, I also now advise all my clients to use WordPress versus Joomla, now that WordPress 3.0 is out and can do just about everything Joomla can do, only better and faster… and then some. (Try hosting a blog with Joomla. It’s really clunky.) WordPress is also much better documented. If Joomla were as well documented as WordPress, I would certainly not get the amount of traffic to this page that I currently do!
Thanks for the information – I guess the learning starts all over again…
I trimmed som waste: extra templates that got uploaded, and turned of the plugins I wasn’t using, and things sped up considerably, but…
I installed the Joomla! application on a Linux shared server at GoDaddy and uploaded my Joomla! files with Filezilla without problem, but I cannot import my database: MySQL stubbornly returns a 1044 error message “Access denied to user…” I did extensive research in Joomla!, GoDaddy and MySQL documentation and forums; I also asked GoDaddy support at length; I tried everything I was advised to and could think of but everything failed. The DB .sql file is very small though: 816KB. Questions: (1) Will Joomlapack/Kickstart help me to solve this issue? I noticed that the tutorial does not import the DB from phpMyAdmin (accessible from GoDaddy’s Hosting Center). (2) If I use Joomlapack/Kickstart, do I have to uninstall the Joomla! application on GoDaddy, delete all the Joolma! files I uploaded, and delete the DB created by GoDaddy for Joomla!? PLEASE help: I simply don’t know what else I could possibly do (but throwing myself through the window).
Why did my post earlier today disappear?
There is no such thing named “Joomlapack” down the link mentioned at step 1. Did I miss something there?
Hey, John! Since this post was written, I think the software developer renamed it AkeebaBackup or something. It’s the same thing.
Yes, this process should help you resolve this issue.
Wipe everything off your GoDaddy Server. Make sure it’s completely empty. Do not create a database or install anything onto the hosting server before you try this process. This process will install the software and import the database for you.
If this fails. . . use WordPress. It’s so much better!
Thanks a lot. Indeed I found out that Joomlapack has been renamed AkeebaBackup. There are two distribution: a Core and a Pro one.
However I’m perplex about your advice to refrain from creating a DB on GD. AkeebaBackup Guide at http://www.akeebabackup.com/akeeba-backup-documentation/performing-the-restoration-process.html#using-abi, see “Creating a database on GoDaddy”, expressly advises to create one. What say you?
About the change of name of JoomlaPack, see http://www.akeebabackup.com/blog/whats-going-on-with-joomlapack.html. About the features of AkeebaBackup, see http://www.akeebabackup.com/akeeba-backup-for-joomla/index.html. AkeebaBackup can downloaded at http://www.akeebabackup.com/official/akeeba-backup.html.
Ah, yes. I misspoke about the database. It’s been awhile since I’ve actually carried out the process myself as I vastly prefer WordPress these days. But yes, my instructions above do say to create the database on GoDaddy first. My apologies.
Hi Jenn,
Thanks so much for having written this and blazing a trail for many a newb, and well, not so newb too! Just wanted to let you know how appreciative I am, though it has been said many times previously by others. Kind regards!
Thanks so much for the great tutorial. I’ve been making my way through it without much trouble (a pleasant surprise considering my lack of experience). However, now I’m running into the same problem that Richard mentioned above. I’m quite the newb and am not sure what he means by unlocking the editing on the root folder. Can you help? Or Richard?
Much appreciated!
I resolved that problem by just changing to FTP instead of direct write.
Now I’ve finished all the way up to the last step. It says my configuration.php could not be written to disk and I have to copy the contents of the box directly to the configuration.php file in the root folder. I did this on the godaddy site, but then when I try going to my site, which I believe is supposed to be live, it loads the akeeba backup installer again. Any ideas? I’m not sure what to try. Thanks!
I followed your instructions and it seems to work except that none of my graphics display and the back end of Joomla doesn’t work. Any suggestions? Thanks!
I can not thank you enough. This worked splendidly!
Hello,
I use
I use hosting2go.nl and within Plesk I created a database.
With Filezilla I transferd my .jpa file and my kickstartfiles to /httpdocs. This is my toplevel folder.
Then I end at Part Three step 8.
In my browser (explorer
http://www.jan-uitterlinden.nl/kickstart.php, buth nothing happens.
Then I changed the rights of the kickstart and jpa-files, but that does not help.
By the way, before starting this process I cleared /httpdocs.
I don’t know what I did wrong.
jan
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