The latest stable version of Joomla! can be downloaded from http://www.joomla.org/.
NOTE: The file will be a zip file (i.e. Joomla_1.5.10-Stable-Full_Package.zip). Once downloaded, follow these steps to prepare for the installation:
Since Joomla is continuously in development, nightly builds of Joomla are available for download. These contain bug fixes and enhancements made since the last stable release of Joomla. However, be warned that some items added or fixed may result in new bugs arising.
If you still wish to obtain the latest version in development, download and install Tortoise SVN as follows:
Joomla 1.5 is designed to run on an Apache web server (Unix-based). Since Windows PCs do not run Apache (but IIS), it is necessary to download and install WAMP 2.0 (WampServer 2.0) which provides the platform for imitating the Apache web server locally on a Windows PC.
Drop down menus can be created in Joomla 1.5.x simply by following a short number of steps. The Bulletproof Templates blank skeleton template can be used for creating the drop down menus in a fast and efficient way. Alternatively, you can start from scratch and still achieve the same results.
It is good practice to do all your website development on your local PC, and then transfer/upload the amended files to the web server. Therefore it is important you take a copy of the live site and deploy it locally. This is simply a reversal of the tutorial Transferring your local site to the web server. Briefly, the steps necessary are:
If you have access on the web server to the MySQL folder (NOTE: this will generally not be accessible on a web server that is not owned by your company) you can do the following to transfer the local database used by your site to the web server: