Connecting to the Community

Edit

Improvements?

Let us know by posting here.

Connecting to Community

If your website is not already connected to the Concrete community, select Dashboard in the upper right of your Concrete CMS toolbar, then go to Extend Concrete. Note that if you are having trouble connecting with the community, you can review troubleshooting tips here. 

concrete_cms_dashboard_connect_to_community.pngThis opens the Add Functionality screen. Select the blue button labeled Connect to Community to continue to the next screen.

concrete_cms_dashboard_connect_to_community_button.png

Next, create a project page page on the community site by selecting the Create Project Page button:

concrete_cms_dashboard_create_project_page.png

 Tip: The user account and password you use to login to your own website is different from your community account.

If you are logged in to your Concrete community account, you'll be taken to a New Project page like the one below. If not, sign in with your community account on community.concretecms.com to login. If you do not have an account you can easily register.

concrete_cms_create_new_project.png

Once your project page has been created, make note of the ID and Secret in the Connection Information section. You will need these values later.

If you have purchased licenses for add-ons or themes, you should now have the ability to assign those licenses to your project. Pick whichever add-ons & themes are for this site and select the Associate button.

concrete_cms_creating_project_keys.pngGo back to your website and paste the ID and Secret (Key) into the fields in Step 2 (see the screenshot below), then select the Save button:

concrete_cms_dashboard_entering_project_keys.pngIf you have entered the correct values, the Connect to the Community page will display a success notice like in the screenshot below:

concrete_cms_successful_community_connection_screen.png

Troubleshooting Connecting to the Community

You may receive an error when you try to connect your website, or even after your website has been connected for some time. Below are some of the most common causes and solutions.

Check for cURL and allow_url_fopen:

cURL and allow_url_fopen are PHP options that allow your site to download stuff you ask it to, like new packages from concretecms.org. How can you tell if these are installed and enabled? By asking PHP to display all its configuration info with the phpinfo() function.

  Note: if you have access to the command line on your webserver, you can get the same information by typing php -i

Use a plain text editor (like TextWrangler for Mac, Notepad for Windows, etc) to create a new PHP file named phpinfo.php. Inside, paste just this code:

phpinfo();

 

Use an FTP client or your control panel file manager to upload this file to your server. Now open a web browser and visit that page. If you put the file in your root web directory, your URL would look something like this: https://www.example.com/phpinfo.php

You'll be presented with a page that displays a lengthy table filled with settings. This data describes every option that is currently active in your PHP install.

concrete_cms_phpinfo_example.pngSearch the text (or scroll down) until you find allow_url_fopen. It should be set to "On" for both Local and Master values:

concrete_cms_allow_url_fopen_example.png

Now search the text for curl. You should see settings like this:

concrete_cms_curl_phpinfo_example.png

If you can't find curl anywhere on this page, it's likely not installed.

Since these settings are usually determined by your web hosting company, you'll likely need to contact their tech support staff to figure out if they can / will enable this stuff for your site.

If your host won't support these settings, you'll need to download your add-ons and themes and install them manually. Check out the section titled "By Hand" on our Installation Instructions Page.

 

But cURL and allow_url_fopen are installed! Everything looks fine!

Does your web host allow outgoing connections? Contact your hosting company and find out. Your site needs to connect to concretecms.org in order to download packages, but if outgoing traffic is blocked, it will never reach our marketplace.

 

Okay, my host says outgoing connections are allowed, but I still can't connect.

If you are sure your PHP settings are correct and outgoing connections are allowed, your web host or IP address might be blacklisted from connecting to concretecms.org. We'll need to unblock your host's outgoing request IP number. Often, this is different from the IP address of your website. You can find out what this is by contacting your hosting company and asking, "What is the outgoing IP for curl requests?"

Fill out our contact form tell us that you think you've been blacklisted. We'll take a look at our block list and see if we can find an entry matching your server's address. If so, we'll remove it and you should be able to connect to the marketplace.