Joomla Configuration - Live Site

How to use my Joomla site if my domain is not pointed to SiteGround?

How to create my Joomla site before publishing it on my domain?

If you have a web hosting account at SiteGround, but your domain name is not pointed to your hosting account yet, you can still configure your Joomla installation so that it uses our server host name.

Step 1: Preparation

In order to configure your website to work while your domain name is not pointed to SiteGround server yet (usually when you want to create your website before publishing it), you would need to modify the configuration.php. We strongly recommend you to create backups of all files you are planning to modify. In this particular case you would need to backup the configuration.php file which is located at your Joomla installation directory.

Step 2: Locating the configuration.php file.

Locate the file called configuration.php in your Joomla installation directory. For example if you have installed Joomla in your public_html (a.k.a. www, main or root) directory, the configuration.php will be in the public_html directory too.

Open the file using the cPanel -> File Manager section. Use the yellow folder icons to navigate through your directory structure. Then select the configuration.php file and you will notice that a menu with file functions will appear at the top right corner of the page. Select Edit file and a new browser window will open with the content of the file. Locate the line in configuration.php file, which contains the following text:

"$mosConfig_live_site = ''

It usually contains the domain, under which the Joomla has been installed by default.

Step 3: Editing the configuration.php

Edit the $mosConfig_live_site value and set it to the server URL. For example, if you account is located at sitegroundXXX.com server and your username is username you have to set the $mosConfig_live_site value to:

$mosConfig_live_site = 'http://sitegroundXXX.com/~username';

Click the Save button and reload your site by using the Ctrl + F5 key combination in order to avoid seeing cached content.

Well done! You have successfully enabled your Joomla system to work without pointing your domain name to SiteGround!

If something goes wrong, you can just replace the configuration.php with your back-up copy of the file which you have created before you started this process.