How does concrete5 work

We'd be happy to put together a hosting environment or support plan that meets your organization's unique needs. What should you build with Concrete? Trusted by the best. What makes Concrete Special? Is it really free? Is it safe? You're Ready for a chat. You need a CMS that saves you time.

Host: localhost This makes sure that the user can only be used if the database is accessed by the local machine. Password: concrete5 The password to access your database. Feel free to use a more secure password than concrete5, just make sure you remember it when we install concrete5 in the next step. Hit Go and the user is available and your database is ready for concrete5!

To install concrete5, follow these steps:. You should see the installation screen:. On the left there are a few checks to make sure that your web server meets all the requirements of concrete5.

A few words about the required items:. The webserver must be able to write some files in your website's installation directory. We'll discuss this issue later, when we move the site to the production server.

Version Comparison : This feature uses Python to show you the difference between page modifications. But since it's optional we're not going to worry about it. Name Your Site : Any name you want—can be changed in the dashboard later. Your Email Address : The admin mail address. Make sure it exists; this is where you'll receive a link to change the eventually forgotten admin password.

You will also have to enter the following database information:. Server : Since the database is running on the same machine as the web server, just enter localhost. Sample Content : If you enable this, concrete5 will create a few sample pages to play around with. Enable this, if you're new to concrete5, it will create some nice pages where you can see the different blocks you can use to build your website. A few seconds after you've clicked Install Concrete you should see a screen with an automatically generated admin password.

Make sure you don't lose it. After you've successfully installed concrete5 you'll find a file called site. This is where the installation process has saved the information you've entered during the process. Here's how it looks:. If the credentials to access your MySQL database have changed, this is where you have to modify them to make sure concrete5 can access your database.

It's only filled if your website is located in a subdirectory. Salts are used to complicate dictionary attacks and even if they are useless without a password you should still not publish a real password salt to keep your site safe.

You'll often have to check or modify a few lines in the configuration file, so where can you find it? When you browse to a subpage in your concrete5 site you'll notice an odd thing in every URL: there's index. Every request to a page in concrete5 is processed by index. This has several advantages: It's easier to check the permissions, there's a single point where the page rendering time can be improved, and a few more things.

However, even with these advantages you probably wouldn't like to see index. Luckily it's rather easy to change it if your web server supports rewrite rules. XAMPP does, and here's what we have to do. Follo w these steps to get rid of the index.

Click on the Dashboard button in the top-right corner. This is the file where the rewrite rules are stored which remove index. Congratulations, you're done! In case you'd like to know more about this Apache feature this is the official documentation:. It's a simple text file you can open with any text editor of your choice. If you haven't worked with Apache before, the content might be a bit confusing but concrete5 took care of it.

You shouldn't have to modify anything on your own in this file. You should now have a working concrete5 installation from where you'll learn how to work with concrete5. In case you have to check or modify your concrete5 configuration, you should know where to find the files. We're going to use this test site to build our own site including some customization and programming.

Remo Laubacher grew up in Central Switzerland in a small village surrounded by mountains and natural beauty. He started working with computers a long time ago and then, after various computer-related projects, focused on ERP and Oracle development. At Mesch—where he's responsible for all development-related topics—he discovered concrete5 as the perfect tool for their web-related projects and has since become a key member of the concrete5 community. He has also authored concrete5 Beginner's Guide and Creating concrete5 Themes.

About this book Concrete5 is a content management system for PHP developers. Publication date: March Publisher Packt. Pages ISBN Chapter 1. Preparing for installation. Web browser. We're able to jump into a brand new site and quickly work things out, it's not a mish-mash of ad-hoc plugins that change the way you fundamentally manage content- it's predictable and familiar. So when working as a temporary team on a project concrete5 works really well as collaborative platform.

A theme can be built or configured and content added while additional features are developed and installed in parallel. The reasons why we've been able to use concrete5 for all those purposes and have successful outcomes is due to a bunch of reasons such as: - The technical quality of the codebase. It follows modern design practices and rarely feels like a hack to achieve something.

Things like custom block templates make overriding output very easy and clean. It's also great how you can bundle nearly everything into a package, and these can be as simple or complex as required. The predicability and structure of the codebase is critical when you get asked to adjust a feature potentially years down the track! We don't like having to install and maintain a whole bunch of extra plugins for common CMS tasks.

There are so many features built that solve problems in seconds. We greatly dislike CMS systems that require someone to enter a 'backend' system to make a change, then bounce back and forth between the frontend and backend to preview those changes. Even custom grids can move between themes. We've never had any security issues because of concrete5 itself, and we believe this is due to it's core design - The community, while modest, is very supportive and we've made some great friends out of it.

Between the forums, slack and direct messaging, I normally get responses to my own questions within minutes. Having a smaller community means it's easier to make contact with developers, things don't get lost in the noise. It's also been great to have direct contact with Franz, Andrew and Korvin, the passion for concrete5 gives us a lot of confidence going into the future. Totally Random in the past and the new Town Hall videos also help with all that.

We don't really think there is one killer feature that sells concrete5, it's a combination of many factors! Our agency pixoinc. We have worked with concrete5 for just over ten years.

Most of the sites are for small to medium sized businesses in all industries, but have done sites for universities, resorts, restaurant chains and Fortune companies. One thing, although not obvious, that makes concrete5 unique is that it is not Wordpress.

Meaning that if you want to stand out in the marketplace and have a unique position then not being in the big ocean of Wordpress designers gives us a unique place to stand out.

Another feature is that concrete5 is easier to use for site owners than many CMS. I can take a non-technical business owner and get them up to speed on how to manage their website in 45 minutes or less.

This is key.