Without wasting your time and mine, here are the five steps that you have to take. You should note, however, that these are sequential steps. This means that you have to do the first one first, followed by the second, etc. While you may sometimes, be able to still build a Joomla site without actually following some of these steps sequentially, it is best not to do so. You will see why as we move along.

So, here is what you need to do.

1. Install Joomla: Well, you can't actually do anything until after installing Joomla on your website. There are a number of ways to do this.

One of the most common two is to install the CMS using “Fantastico” on your hosting account Control Panel. This takes about 3 minutes at most and is the simplest and easiest way of installing Joomla.

The other way is to install it manually. This requires you to upload the Joomla installation package on your website. You will then follow the instructions to install it from there.

2. Configure Joomla: After successfully installing Joomla, you can now login to the Joomla Admin area or Backend to configure it. The directory of the admin area is the /administrator directory of your Joomla site. Therefore, if-for example- you installed Joomla on mywebsite.com, your admin area will be mywebsite.com/administrator .

Once you login, select the “Site” tab on the far left and click on the “Global Configuration” link. Follow the instructions here to configure your site, server and system information. This may take you anything from 3 to 10 minutes to finish.

3. Create Joomla Content: The next necessary step to designing your Joomla website is to create your content sections, categories and content items or pages.

The content sections are the broadest divisions of content on your Joomla site. The categories are the sub-divisions of content for each section.

The content items, pages or articles (as they are variously called) are the pieces of content that are posted under each category. For example, to find your “How to Design a Joomla Website” article or page on your website, I may have to go to the CMS section, select the Joomla Category and there I will find the “How to Design Joomla Websites” article or page.

This content hierarchy will look like this:

Section ====> Category ===> Content Item/Page.

It is just a very simple and organized way of managing your content in Joomla.

Do note that you can have as many content sections, categories or content pages as you want. It is virtually unlimited. So, whether you are designing a Joomla article directory or just a simple niche website, you will still find that the Joomla CMS will serve your purpose all the same.

4. Create Menus: The Joomla Menu or site navigation system is divided into categories.

So, for example, you may have a menu category for your paid products, another one for your freebies and even another for your niche articles.

Now, under each category you will have menu items. So, if -for example-you want to have your paid products accessible from the same menu category, you may therefore, have an “Internet Marketing Products” menu category.

Under this, you will have one menu item that links to your blogging ebook, another menu item that links to your “social networking” course; and yet still another one that points to your traffic generation membership site. And so on.

You can also have any of the menu items point to a content section, category or page of your website. It is all about simple creativity.

5. Modify and Customize the Site: One good reason to design Joomla websites is that you can actually modify and customize your Joomla site as much or as little as you want to. So, we may both be using the same template, for example, but each of us can modify the template and rearrange the modules in such a way that the finished website may not look anything similar to the original site.

You can customize your Joomla website by:

• Installing new templates and modifying them according to your taste.

• Modifying and customizing existing templates that come with Joomla

• Installing new Joomla components

• Installing and modifying modules and changing their positions on the website.

• And so much more…

You can do these and more from the “Extensions” tab in your Admin area.