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Installation ​

Requirements ​

Server (production):

  • PHP 8.1 or later (with json, mbstring, fileinfo extensions)
  • A web server (Apache, Nginx, Caddy)

Development machine:

  • Node.js 18+ (only needed to build the admin frontend — not required on the server)

Deployment ​

1. Clone the repository ​

bash
git clone https://github.com/your-org/cometcms.git
cd cometcms

2. Build a deployment package ​

bash
make build

This compiles the Vue admin frontend and assembles everything into a dist/ folder. The output is a self-contained PHP application — no Node.js is needed on the server.

3. Upload to your server ​

Upload the contents of dist/ to your server's web root (or a subdirectory). The structure will look like:

index.php
router.php
app/
config/
admin/        ← compiled Vue frontend
storage/      ← empty, writable directory for content/users/etc.

4. Configure your web server ​

All requests must be routed through index.php.

Apache (.htaccess is included in the build):

apache
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]

Nginx:

nginx
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}

5. Ensure storage/ is writable ​

bash
chmod -R 755 storage/

6. Open the admin ​

Navigate to https://yourdomain.com/admin. The first-run setup screen will appear.

Configuration (optional) ​

config/config.php lets you adjust:

  • app.timezone — default UTC
  • content.max_revisions — revision snapshots kept per entry, default 50
  • cache.ttl — API cache TTL in seconds
  • security.login_throttle — brute-force protection limits
  • updates.repository_url — GitHub repository used by the admin update page
  • updates.require_checksum — require a .sha256 release asset before installing
  • updates.preserved_paths — paths skipped when installing release ZIPs
  • webhooks — outbound webhook URLs

The URL is auto-detected from the HTTP request — no base_url setting is needed.

The admin update page is opened by clicking the CometCMS version in the sidebar. Update checks use GitHub releases. Updates are downloaded and verified first, then installed from the staged package. Installing an update replaces release-owned application files while preserving the configured paths, including storage/ for content, content types, media, users, revisions and other local data.

CometCMS supports public GitHub releases for update checks and downloads.

Local development ​

bash
npm install
make dev

This starts the PHP built-in server and the Vite dev server simultaneously. The admin is available at http://localhost:8000/admin.

CometCMS Documentation