If you are planning to create a stunning website, you need to choose the right platform that can handle it with ease. Joomla is a popular content management system that makes website development a breeze, and Softaculous is the one-click installer most cPanel-based hosting accounts ship with. In this tutorial we'll walk through installing a fresh Joomla site using Softaculous from start to finish.
Step 1: Log in to cPanel
Your cPanel is usually at https://yourdomain.com/cpanel or https://yourdomain.com:2083. Your hosting provider sent you the username and password when your account was set up.
Step 2: Open Softaculous
In cPanel, scroll down to the Software section and click Softaculous Apps Installer. Some hosts label it just “Softaculous” or show a Joomla shortcut icon directly — both routes land in the same place.
Step 3: Find Joomla
In Softaculous, type “Joomla” into the search box on the left, or browse to Portals/CMS → Joomla. Click the Install Now button.
Step 4: Fill in the install form
A few fields matter:
- Choose Protocol — pick
https://www.if you have an SSL certificate set up. Most modern hosts include free Let's Encrypt SSL, so this is usually the right choice. - Choose Domain — your domain name.
- In Directory — leave this blank if you want Joomla installed at your domain root (e.g.
yourdomain.com). Type a folder name likeblogif you want it atyourdomain.com/blog. - Site Name and Site Description — show up in your site's title bar and search-engine results. You can change them later.
- Admin Username — pick something other than
admin(security best practice). - Admin Password — long and unique. Let Softaculous generate one for you if you want.
- Admin Email — where Joomla sends notifications.
Step 5: Click Install
Scroll to the bottom and hit Install. Softaculous takes 30 to 60 seconds to set everything up.
Step 6: You're done
Softaculous shows you two URLs: one to your new site's front page, one to your administrator login (typically yourdomain.com/administrator). Bookmark the admin URL and log in with the username and password you just set.
That's it — you now have a working Joomla site ready to dress up with a template. If you're using one of our VirtueMart templates, the next step is installing the template package from your member downloads area.
