Setup Photon CMS¶

This example will use photon cli to install Photon CMS from within the Devilbox PHP container.

After completing the below listed steps, you will have a working Laravel setup ready to be served via http and https.

See also

Table of Contents

Overview
Walk through
Next steps

Overview ¶

The following configuration will be used:

Project name	VirtualHost directory	Database	TLD_SUFFIX	Project URL
my-photon	/shared/httpd/my-photon	blog	loc	http://my-photon.loc https://my-photon.loc

Note

Inside the Devilbox PHP container, projects are always in /shared/httpd/.
On your host operating system, projects are by default in ./data/www/ inside the Devilbox git directory. This path can be changed via HOST_PATH_HTTPD_DATADIR.

Walk through ¶

It will be ready in six simple steps:

Enter the PHP container
Create a new VirtualHost directory
Install Photon
Symlink webroot directory
Setup DNS record
Visit http://my-photon.loc in your browser

2. Create new vhost directory ¶

The vhost directory defines the name under which your project will be available.
( <vhost dir>.TLD_SUFFIX will be the final URL ).

devilbox@php-7.0.20 in /shared/httpd $ mkdir my-photon

See also

TLD_SUFFIX

3. Install Photon ¶

Navigate into your newly created vhost directory and install Photom CMS with photon cli.

Note

During the installation you will be asked for the MySQL hostname, username and password. Ensure not to specify localhost, but instead use 127.0.0.1 for the hostname. Additionally, provide a pair of credentials that has permissions to create a database or create the database itself beforehand.

devilbox@php-7.0.20 in /shared/httpd $ cd my-photon
devilbox@php-7.0.20 in /shared/httpd/my-photon $ photon new blog
...What is your mysql hostname? [localhost]  127.0.0.1
...What is your mysql username? [root]root
...What is your mysql password? []

How does the directory structure look after installation:

devilbox@php-7.0.20 in /shared/httpd/my-photon $ tree -L 1
.
└── blog

1 directory, 0 files

4. Symlink webroot ¶

Symlinking the actual webroot directory to htdocs is important. The web server expects every project’s document root to be in <vhost dir>/htdocs/. This is the path where it will serve the files. This is also the path where your frameworks entrypoint (usually index.php) should be found.

Some frameworks however provide its actual content in nested directories of unknown levels. This would be impossible to figure out by the web server, so you manually have to symlink it back to its expected path.

devilbox@php-7.0.20 in /shared/httpd/my-photon $ ln -s blog/public/ htdocs

How does the directory structure look after symlinking:

devilbox@php-7.0.20 in /shared/httpd/my-photon $ tree -L 1
.
├── blog
└── htdocs -> blog/public

2 directories, 0 files

As you can see from the above directory structure, htdocs is available in its expected path and points to the frameworks entrypoint.

Important

When using Docker Toolbox, you need to explicitly allow the usage of symlinks. See below for instructions:

Docker Toolbox and Symlinks

5. DNS record ¶

If you have Auto DNS configured already, you can skip this section, because DNS entries will be available automatically by the bundled DNS server.

If you don’t have Auto DNS configured, you will need to add the following line to your host operating systems /etc/hosts file (or C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc on Windows):

/etc/hosts¶

127.0.0.1 my-photon.loc

See also

Setup Photon CMS¶

Overview ¶

Walk through ¶

1. Enter the PHP container ¶

2. Create new vhost directory ¶

3. Install Photon ¶

4. Symlink webroot ¶

5. DNS record ¶

6. Open your browser ¶

Next steps ¶

Use bundled batteries ¶

Enhance the Devilbox ¶

Add services ¶

Container tools ¶