This is the Jomres Joomla 4 Vanilla Quickstart.

It's a fully installed and configured installation of Jomres Core in Joomla 4.

It's a straightforward, bloat-free installation of Joomla 4, Jomres Core, a handful of it's plugins plus Akeeba Backup. It's purpose is to save you time when setting up a Jomres installation for the first time.

Jomres powerful, it is somewhere in the region of half a million lines (including libraries and plugins) of code, so it can be daunting for the new user. Using this Quickstart will help you to get started with Jomres without needing to refer too much to documentation.

If you're pressed for time, or if your English isn't that great, key bullet points in this article are highlighted in green.

Do I need a Jomres license to use this Quickstart?

No, this is a free download, you can use it in whatever way suits your needs.

You're welcome to use this Quickstart as a basis for creating your online booking website. Jomres Core is a complete booking system which you can, if you wish, extend through it's plugins however you're free to use this Quickstart as is. Add your own template, or just customise the Cassiopeia child template. Add modules or not, it's up to you. You can even follow the documentation on how to create your own plugins, if you want.

There are a couple of Jomres templates and scripts in the template override directory. These are there mainly to show you how to override Jomres Core templates and Jomres scripts.

The world is your oyster. Let's see what you can do with it.

What can I use Jomres for?

By default Jomres is configured for taking bookings for hotels, villas, apartments, any kind of hospitality system you wish. It can, however, be used for any resource that is booked out by the day. We've seen it used for cars, golf courses, even parking garages.

Ok, I've installed this Quickstart, what do I do next?

First we recommend that you ensure that Joomla and any plugins installed are updated. Once you've done that, visit Akeeba backup in the Components menu and create a backup of your installation. Once you've done that you've got a baseline installation. If you make a mistake that you don't know how to roll back, or if you just want to start again, you can, quickly and easily using this backup.

Visit the Administrator > Components > Jomres control panel. If it alerts you with any warnings, resolve them. You can explore this area if you want, but you shouldn't need to make any changes if you're using Jomres for the first time. Instead, move onto the next step.

Next, visit the Bookings page of the Main Menu (the Bookings page in the menu above) while logged in as Administrator. This will take you to the property management pages. All property management is done via the frontend, public facing pages.

From this area you can preview your property, set your real world address, change prices, configure your payment gateway(s), upload images via the Media Centre and more. Change those settings to match your real-world property and you'll be able to take bookings online in no time.

Can I install Jomres plugins without a Jomres subscription?

Some, it depends on the plugin.

Those plugins that we consider necessary for virtually any Jomres installation (such as the Alternative Init plugin, which is required for shortcodes to work on non-Jomres pages) are free to install, as are most of the REST API plugins. Other plugins you will need a valid license key to install them.

If I use this Quickstart then decide later that I want to get a license to download plugins, can I do that?

Yes.

Once you have a valid license key go to Administrator > Jomres > Settings > Site Configuration and save your license key there. Once you've done that, you can install any of the plugins listed in the Jomres plugin manager.

Can I take payments for bookings?

Yes.

Jomres Core comes with the Stripe payment gateway already installed. You will need to visit your property's Payment Gateways configuration page to set your Stripe API keys and other information. Just follow the instructions on that page.

Which shortcodes can I use?

Visit Administrator > Components > Jomres > Tools > Shortcodes. This page is dynamically generated so any shortcodes listed there are already available for you to use in modules or articles.

This installation comes pre-installed with two shortcodes already configured.

The Property Widget module uses it. You can use this as a guide to see how to create your own custom modules. Just remember when you create a module with a Jomres shortcode, to always set the module's Options tab > Prepare Content setting to Yes.

The second one is in the List Properties article, which shows you how you can use shortcodes in Joomla articles.

Does Jomres support multiple languages?

Yes. See the Jomres Site Manager's guide, Translations section.

All label translations are saved to the database, there's no need to modify language files and Jomres Core comes with 38 language files by default.

You can add as many languages as you need to your Joomla installation. On the off-chance that you need a language file that Jomres doesn't already have you can create a new language plugin by following this guide.

Is there a limit to the number of properties I can list?

No, there's no limit.

You can add as many properties as you like.

Can other people add their properties to this site?

Yes.

To change that visit Administrator > Components > Jomres > Settings > Site Configuration > Portal Functionality tab and set the "Users can register their businesses?" setting to No.

What do you get out of providing this Quickstart?

Nothing except the satisfaction of knowing that I'm providing a free and Open Source online booking engine. Jomres Core is, and always will be, free.

What else do I need to know?

Lots, probably. The best resource for information about Jomres is the Documentation pages on Jomres.net. In this article we've given you a quick summary of stuff that you'll likely need to know to get the ball rolling however there's lots more to learn about Jomres' capabilities. If you decide that Jomres is the tool you want to use for building your next online booking website, the documentation pages are full of hints and tips and guidance on how to get the best out of the system.