Build a Joomla 5 Site with AI: The Complete Briefing and Setup Guide

We built this site — The AI Director — entirely through conversation with VS Code and Claude Code. Template, content, categories, menus, modules, SEO — all done by AI working directly against the database and file system, with no Joomla admin UI required for most of it.

Built specifically for VS Code with Claude Code — the tools that can read your files, run commands, and deploy changes directly. Not just chat. Actually build.
Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux — tested on Ubuntu MATE, likely fine on most distributions.

The system that made this possible is a working briefing file: a structured document that tells any AI assistant exactly how Joomla 5 works in Docker, what SQL patterns to use, which fields have no defaults, which errors will cost you hours the first time, and the exact commands to deploy changes safely. Drop it into Claude Code at the start of any session and you're working at full speed from minute one.

Below is a taste of what's in it — the Docker setup and the master session prompt. The full briefing (14 sections, 20+ documented error fixes, copy-paste SQL patterns for articles, categories, menus, tags, and modules) is available for £19.

The Setup: VS Code + Claude Code

The workflow is simple once it's running. VS Code full screen — your project folder open on the left, the AI chat panel on the right. Firefox (or any browser) set to Always on Top at half-screen on the left side, showing your live site at localhost:8080. You type a change in the chat, the AI executes it, you reload the browser without switching windows. That's the entire loop.

To use Claude Code in VS Code you need a Claude subscription:

• Claude Pro — $20/month — gives you Claude Code access in VS Code. More than enough for building and managing sites at a normal pace.
• Claude Max — $100/month — for developers running long sessions, building multiple sites, or doing heavy iterative work. Significantly higher usage limits.

Claude Code handles multi-step tasks, runs terminal commands, and works with large context windows better than most alternatives.

Step 1 — Get Joomla 5 Running in Docker

Create a project folder, add this docker-compose.yml, and run docker compose up -d. Visit http://localhost:8080 after 30 seconds and complete the Joomla web installer.

services:
  app:
    image: joomla:5
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      JOOMLA_DB_HOST: db
      JOOMLA_DB_USER: joomla
      JOOMLA_DB_PASSWORD: your_password
      JOOMLA_DB_NAME: joomla
    volumes:
      - ./joomla:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: mariadb:11
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: joomla
      MYSQL_USER: joomla
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: your_password
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root_password
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/mysql

volumes:
  db_data:

Step 2 — The Master Session Prompt

Paste this to your AI assistant at the start of any Joomla session — before asking it to do anything. Fill in your actual credentials and table prefix.

I'm working on a Joomla 5 site in Docker on Linux. Here is my environment:

- App container: `app` (Joomla 5 + Apache + PHP, port 8080)
- DB container: `db` (MariaDB)
- DB credentials: host=db, name=joomla, user=joomla, pass=YOUR_PASS
- Table prefix: PREFIX_  (check with: SHOW TABLES LIKE '%content';)
- Admin user ID: [run SELECT id, username FROM PREFIX_users LIMIT 5; and paste result]
- Site at: http://localhost:8080

Critical rules you must follow:
1. Use `mariadb` not `mysql` for DB commands
2. Article publish_down must be NULL, never '0000-00-00 00:00:00'
   (zero date = article silently expired — invisible on the frontend, no error shown)
[+ 5 more rules in the Blueprint — these are the ones that cost hours when you hit them cold]

My task: [DESCRIBE WHAT YOU WANT]

Step 3 — The Difference Between a Fast Build and a Slow One

The session prompt above establishes your environment. What it doesn't give Claude Code is the five remaining critical rules — the ones that produce silent failures with no error message. An article that publishes fine but never appears on the frontend. A menu item that creates a 500 on every page. A category that simply doesn't exist after you create it.

These are not edge cases. Every one of them was hit on this build.

Without the Blueprint: Claude Code will figure most things out through conversation. But it rediscovers the same patterns every session, occasionally produces SQL that looks right and quietly breaks something, and has no memory of what worked last time. Solvable. Slower.

One thing worth saying directly: Claude Code is what makes this workflow actually work. Not as a general statement about AI — specifically Claude Code. It holds context across long sessions, reads your entire file system, executes terminal commands, and follows multi-step instructions without losing the thread. A Claude Pro subscription is $20/month. For this kind of build work, it's the foundation everything else sits on.