At this point, we know what we need; it’s time to install Concrete CMS and start building it! There are multiple ways to get access to a website powered by Concrete. For example, you may:
- Install a hosted copy with just a few clicks via something like SimpleScripts, or Windows Web Gallery.
- Download and install a completely prepackaged version of Concrete from bitnami.com.
- Download a copy of Concrete from https://www.concretecms.org/download, unzip it, and install and run it in a local development environment.
- Download a copy via Composer, the popular PHP dependency manager, install and run it in a local development environment.
While the first two options listed here are the easiest, and will get you access to a Concrete installation, they are not as easy to maintain or develop with. That’s why this guide is going to cover our preferred method, which is installation via Composer, the PHP dependency manager. This method is the most versatile and maintainable for developers, and works well with Concrete.
Before You Begin
Before you begin this process, you’ll need to have a local development environment available on your development machine, and you’ll need to know how to configure it. This development environment needs to conform to the minimum system requirements of Concrete. It will need PHP and MySQL installed and running, and you’ll need to know how to access them via the command line. This guide may touch on some of these topics, but if any of them are wholly unfamiliar you’ll need to do some additional reading.
Additionally, make sure you take a look at the Concrete system requirements, and ensure your local development environment conforms to them.