Setup Drupal

Setup Drupal

This example installs Drupal 10 or 11 with Composer inside the Devilbox PHP container. The modern Drupal project template places the web entrypoint in web/, which is linked to Devilbox’s htdocs directory.

Overview

Project name	Container path	Database	TLD_SUFFIX	Project URL
my-drupal	/shared/httpd/my-drupal	my_drupal	lvh.me	http://my-drupal.lvh.me / https://my-drupal.lvh.me

Inside the container, projects are stored in /shared/httpd/; on the host, use ./data/www/.

Caution

Drupal 11 requires newer PHP versions than old Drupal 8/9 examples. Use the PHP 8.3 or PHP 8.4 containers from env-example.

Prerequisites

• Devilbox with PHP 8.3+ and Composer.
• MySQL, HTTPD, and Bind services.
• Docker Compose v2 via Docker.

Start the stack:

./dvl.sh up php httpd mysql bind

Walk through

It will be ready in seven steps:

1. Enter the PHP container.
2. Create a new virtual host directory.
3. Install Drupal with Composer.
4. Link web/ to htdocs.
5. Add a MySQL database.
6. Verify DNS.
7. Open the Drupal installer.

1. Enter the PHP container

./dvl.sh shell php83

2. Create the vhost directory

mkdir -p /shared/httpd/my-drupal
cd /shared/httpd/my-drupal

3. Install Drupal

For Drupal 10 LTS-style compatibility:

composer create-project drupal/recommended-project:^10 drupal

For a new Drupal 11 project on PHP 8.3+:

composer create-project drupal/recommended-project:^11 drupal

Expected structure:

tree -L 1
.
└── drupal

4. Link the webroot

ln -s drupal/web htdocs

Expected structure:

tree -L 1
.
├── drupal
└── htdocs -> drupal/web

5. Add the MySQL database

mysql -u root -h 127.0.0.1 -p -e 'CREATE DATABASE my_drupal CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;'

6. Verify DNS

my-drupal.lvh.me resolves to 127.0.0.1. For a custom suffix, add an equivalent hosts-file record.

7. Open the Drupal installer

Visit http://my-drupal.lvh.me or https://my-drupal.lvh.me and follow the installer.

Use these database values:

• Database type: MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server, or equivalent
• Database name: my_drupal
• Database username: root
• Database password: your .env value
• Advanced host: 127.0.0.1

Next steps

• Install Drush per project with composer require drush/drush when needed.
• Use ./dvl.sh exec "vendor/bin/drush status" from the Drupal project directory for non-interactive checks.
• Configure HTTPS and Xdebug after the installer completes.