Chapter 2. Setting Up Our Environment

When fixing a car, would you use an axe and a chainsaw? When building a house would you do it with a toothbrush and a bottle opener? The answer to both of these questions is an easy no. We all know that you need the right tools for the job, otherwise you risk accidents, the chance that it won't be finished properly, or possibly even finished at all.

It is the same with building a web site. The better the tools, the easier and faster you can work, and the greater the end result will be. So, before we get into building our site, we are going to take a look at some of the available tools and applications for Joomla! developers, and how to use them effectively to improve our performance.

Our goals for this chapter:

Before we even start looking at our site, it's best that we have our environment completely setup. Why? Because it becomes more difficult to change our environment as our work progresses. We start to form habits that are difficult to change, we may make mistakes that are difficult to fix, or we may simply waste the time that could have been saved by doing things correctly from the start.