How to set up Phoca Download, a Download Manager for Joomla Print

There are many Download Manager extensions for Joomla, a lot of which are outdated. Phoca Download is a fairly new extension and seems to have a well-rounded feature set

1) As with all extensions we'll be showing you, start by going to extensions.joomla.org. Then, navigate to the Directory & Documentation / Downloads category and find the Phoca Download page

2) Once there, click Download

 

 

This extension has a number of plugins and modules that you can choose to install. All you really need, though, is the component

3) Click the download link

4) Read over the License Agreement, if you want, then scroll down

 

5) Agree to the terms of the license

6) Click Download

 

7) Now, install the component as you would any other extension

 

For assistance with finding or installing extensions, watch the first two tutorials in this series

 

8) Once you've installed the component in Joomla, scroll down for one final step

9) Since this is a new installation, click the giant Install button to set up the database

 

First, let's go over some of the pages on the menu, starting at the end

 

Info provides you with some helpful links and some other general information about the extension. There's not really anything to do there

 

Statistics will really only become useful after your download system has been active for a while. You can keep track of how many times each file has been downloaded

 

Settings only contains a few options for you to configure. The defaults should work just fine for most purposes, but it's worth checking out this page at some point

 

The Licenses page allows you to add license agreements to the database that can then be added to files. Users must agree to the terms of a file's license before being allowed to download it

 

Now, let's explore the rest of the menu items, starting with Sections

 

10) Click here

 

The first form of organization used by Phoca Download is its sections

 

Let's create a new one

 

Scroll right

 

11) Click New

 

12) Give the section a title

 

The Alias and Date fields will be filled in automatically if we leave them as they are

 

13) Set a date, if you want

14) Change the Access Level or add an image to be displayed next to the section, if you want. Then, scroll down

15) Add a Description

 

 

Scroll up

 

16) Click Save

 

17) Next, go to Categories

 

 

Categories are contained by sections

 

Let's create a new category

 

Look right

 

18) Click New

 

19) Type the title

20) Choose the section we just created

21) Scroll down and enter a description, if you want

 

22) When finished, click Save

 

 

Finally, it's time to add a file to the download manager

 

23) Click Files

 

24) Click Parameters

 

 

The box that appears contains a number of global settings that can be customized, if you wish. Most of this component's settings are actually here, rather than in the Settings tab of the main menu

 

Most of the options are listed under Download Settings

 

 

Scroll down

 

There are a few other settings here that aren't directly related to the downloads

 

Scroll back up

 

25) When finished, click Save

 

 

The Text button allows you to intersperse blocks of text and other content throughout a category's file listing, as you'll see in a moment

26) Click Text

 

27) Give the block of text a Name

 

28) Select the Section

 

 

As we only have one category, it has been selected for us automatically

 

Scroll down

 

29) The Description field is where the text is stored

 

As you can see, all the content and styles you can put on a Joomla article can be added here

 

Scroll up

 

30) Click Save

 

 

The text pseudo-file has been saved

 

Now let's add a real file

 

31) Click New

 

32) Start out as before

33) To upload a file, click File

 

 

34) Browse for a file

35) Start the upload

36) When finished, the file will show up here

 

You can create a new folder in the downloads directory here

 

37) Click here to add the filename to the form and exit this window

 

The filename has been transferred over, as stated

 

If you want the download system to provide a direct link to the file, tick this checkbox. By default, the download will be routed through the download system

 

You can add an icon to display for this file, if you wish

 

Scroll down

 

38) Fill out the remaining details, or just leave it all blank

 

If you wish to instead link to an external file, do so here

 

When finished, scroll up

 

39) Click Save

 

 

Once some people have downloaded it, this direct link to its statistics might come in handy

 

All that's left now is to add a menu link leading to the download system

 

40) Go to Menus

 

41) Then Main Menu

 

Look to the right

 

42) Click New

 

43) Select Phoca Download

 

44) Choose this layout

 

45) Enter a title

 

 

Scroll down

 

46) Customize any of these settings you want

 

Then, scroll up and right

 

Here are some basic parameters that are fine left as the defaults

 

Expand the Parameters (Component) tab

 

These are the same settings, exactly, that are on the Parameters window of the Files page. If you change nothing here, the settings for this component will be exactly as they are specified there

47) When finished, click Save

 

At last, we can go view the downloads page on our Joomla site

 

48) Click Preview

 

49) Click the Downloads link we just created

 

Here is the Phoca Download component

 

Any sections you add will be displayed next to this one

 

50) Click the title to view the section's page, or click the category link below it to go directly to the file list

 

As you can see, here is this section's description

51) Click the category link

 

Here's the text block...

 

...and below is the file. They are in the correct order

 

That's it! You now know how to set up and use the Phoca Download manager on your Joomla installation