?s in the previous versions, Joomla has a Global Configuration area. Note that if you are using the previous Joomla versions - 1.7 or even 1.6 the same instructions are valid. You can find it in Joomla Admin, Top admin panel, Site, Global Configuration. There you will find 4 tabs with the following options:
Site - here you can change all basic site settings such as site name, meta data and SEO options. You can also put your site offline and set the offline message from here.
All options are important in the Site tab, especially the SEO ones. If you are using Apache webserver, you will have to rename the file htaccess.txt to .htaccess in order for the Use Apache mod_rewrite feature to work.
System - while most of the settings in the system tab are rather advanced, you should definitely pay attention to two of them:
Cache Settings - set it to On - Progressive Caching if you’d like maximum caching and fastest Joomla. Set it to On - Conservative if you’d like to disable modules caching. In any case there is cache time in minutes. During this time changes may not appear because cached copies will be served to the viewers.
Session Settings - this is the timeframe during which you will stay logged in your Joomla even if you are inactive. Increase it if you are annoyed by being logged out too often from your Joomla.
Server - most of the settings here should be automatically configured during the installation. You might want to change the Location Settings if you are in a different time zone though. This will help you when the published date of your articles is incorrect or when you receive Joomla notifications with invalid date.
Permissions - this is probably the most important improvement in Joomla 1.7. It gives you the opportunity to allow / disallow certain actions for the different access levels and groups users. By default you should change nothing in the Permissions for a standard site. These functions are rather meant for sites with complex structure and multiple user levels.
