The previous two tips were step by step tutorials on how to host a Joomla website for free (only for one year) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) on both Windows Server and Ubuntu with Zpanel. AWS is an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) market leader and hosting a Joomla website for free on their platform has many advantages.

This tip will present a step by step tutorial on how to host a Joomla website for free (forever! No credit card is even required) on Openshift. Openshift is a PaaS (Platform as a Service) market leader. The service allows anyone to host a Joomla website for free without the need of a credit card and without anytime restriction of course you’ve restricted resources (1 GB of storage and 512 MB of RAM) and that’s quite enough to host a Joomla website, in case the website grew and you want to scale you can easily do that for a very affordable price. Without further ado let’s dive into the steps.

Ingredients

A free Openshift account, just go to Openshift website and register using your email, no credit card is required.

Steps

After registering; go to Openshift home page and click on the “MY APPS” on the top of the screen. You’ll be directed to your log-in window and enter your credentials, you’ll be directed to a new window click on the blue “Create your first application now” link. You’ll be directed to a window, select the “PHP 5.4” tab from the “PHP” menu. You’ll be directed to a new window, in the public URL; type the name of the project/application name (e.g. MyAwesomeWebsite, Joomla, etc.) in the first space and the domain name (it’s not your real domain name, just any identification name e.g. AwesomeGuy/AwesomeGal) in the second space. Under the public URL, there’s the source code slot, just copy and paste the following link “https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms.git” and it should like the screenshot below: Leave everything as it’s and click on “Create Application” tab at the end of the window. It will take a while then you’ll be directed to a new window, just click on the blue “Not now continue” link. You’ll be directed to a new window where you should add MySQL just by clicking the blue “MySQL” link. You’ll be directed to a new window, just click on the “Add Cartridge” tab. You shall be directed to anew window where you shall find all of your “MySQL” credentials. Now you’ll need to add phpMyAdmin; click on the blue “Add phpMyAdmin” located at the bottom of the same window. You’ll then be directed to a new window to confirm the addition of phpMyAdmin, just click on the “Add Cartridge” tab. You’ll be directed to the main window again and it’s time to go to your website and install Joomla, to do that simply click on the blue link at the top of the screen (that’s your URL). You’ll be directed to the Joomla installation window.

Now you’ve a fully functional and free hosted Joomla website. Now, there are some side notes:

To direct your new website to your own domain (e.g. www.example.com), simply put your Openshift address (xxxx-zzzz.rhcloud.com) in your CNAME record in your domain registrar panel, then open your panel and click on the blue “Change” link. You’ll be directed to a new window; type your domain name in “Domain Name” field on Openshift.

Now, you’ve a fully functional Joomla website that’s hosted for free on Openshift.

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