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Installation Instructions

0. Introduction

Craft 3 is available as a Composer package, and for the duration of the Beta, Composer is the only way to install Craft 3. (We’ll introduce an alternate, non-Composer installation method once it’s out of Beta.) If you’re unfamiliar with Composer, it’s a package manager for PHP, meaning it’s a tool that attempts to make installing and updating PHP libraries (like Craft) a simple terminal command away.

Craft’s Composer support is made up of three parts:

  1. craftcms/cms – Composer package that contains all of Craft’s source code and bootstrap scripts.
  2. craftcms/plugin-installer – Custom Composer installer that makes it possible to install Craft plugins with Composer.
  3. craftcms/craft – Composer project that can be installed as a starting point for new Craft projects, with the cms and plugin-installer dependencies already in place.

1. Install Composer

You can find out if Composer is already installed by opening your terminal and entering one of the following commands:

  • macOS/Linux/Unix

      which composer

  • Windows

      where composer

If that outputs a file path(s), Composer is installed. Otherwise you will need to follow Composer’s installation instructions:

2. Create a New Craft Project

To create a new Craft project, simply run this command (substituting PATH with the path the project should be created at):

composer create-project craftcms/craft PATH -s beta

{tip} If Composer complains that your system doesn’t have PHP 7 installed, but you know it’s not an issue because Craft will run with a different PHP install (e.g. through MAMP or Vagrant), use the --ignore-platform-reqs flag.

Composer will take a few minutes to install everything, so this would be a great time to make yourself some coffee or a cocktail.

Once it’s finished, your project directory should have a file structure like this:

config/...
storage/
templates/
vendor/...
web/...
.env
.env.example
composer.json
craft
craft.bat
LICENSE.md
README.md

See Directory Structure for a rundown of what each of those directories and files are for.

3. Set up the Database

Next up, you’ll need to create a database for your Craft project. Craft 3 supports both MySQL 5.5+ and PostgreSQL 9.5+.

If you’re given a choice, we recommend the following database settings in most cases:

  • MySQL

    • Default Character Set: utf8
    • Default Collation: utf8_unicode_ci

  • PostgreSQL

    • Character Set: UTF8

Once the database is created, you’ll need to configure Craft with its connection settings. Open the .env file at the root of your Craft project and fill in your database connection settings.

{tip} That .env file will be processed via PHP dotenv, which the craftcms/craft project comes with preinstalled. The advantage of using PHP dotenv is that it offers a place to store sensitive information (like database connection settings) in a file that doesn’t get committed to your Git repository.

4. Set up the Web Server

Create a new web server to host your Craft project. Its document root should point to the web/ folder.

If you’re not using MAMP, you will probably need to update your hosts file, so your computer knows to route requests to your chosen host name to the local computer.

  • macOS/Linux/Unix: /etc/hosts
  • Windows: \Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

You can test whether everything is set up correctly by pointing your web browser to http://HOSTNAME/index.php?p=admin (substituting HOSTNAME with your new web server’s host name). You should get the Craft installation wizard, which will take you through a couple setup screens, and then perform the actual installation.