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Devilbox

Setup Photon CMS

Setup Photon CMS

This example installs Photon CMS from inside the Devilbox PHP container and serves its public directory through htdocs.

Overview

Project nameContainer pathDatabaseTLD_SUFFIXProject URL
my-photon/shared/httpd/my-photonbloglvh.mehttp://my-photon.lvh.me / https://my-photon.lvh.me

Projects live in /shared/httpd/ in the PHP container and in ./data/www/ on the host.

Prerequisites

  • Devilbox with PHP 8.3 or PHP 8.4 available.
  • MySQL, HTTPD, and Bind services.
  • Photon CLI installed or installable in the PHP container.

Start the stack:

Terminal window
./dvl.sh up php httpd mysql bind

Walk through

It will be ready in six steps:

  1. Enter the PHP container.
  2. Create a new virtual host directory.
  3. Install Photon CMS.
  4. Link public/ to htdocs.
  5. Verify DNS.
  6. Open the project.

1. Enter the PHP container

Terminal window
./dvl.sh shell php83

2. Create the vhost directory

Terminal window
mkdir -p /shared/httpd/my-photon
cd /shared/httpd/my-photon

3. Install Photon CMS

Run the Photon CLI and answer the database prompts. Use 127.0.0.1 for the MySQL hostname so the connection uses the forwarded MySQL service inside Devilbox.

Terminal window
photon new blog

Suggested answers:

  • MySQL hostname: 127.0.0.1
  • MySQL username: root
  • MySQL password: your .env value
  • Database name: blog

Expected structure:

Terminal window
tree -L 1
.
└── blog
Terminal window
ln -s blog/public htdocs

Expected structure:

Terminal window
tree -L 1
.
├── blog
└── htdocs -> blog/public

5. Verify DNS

my-photon.lvh.me resolves to localhost by default. Add a hosts entry only when using a custom suffix.

6. Open your browser

Visit http://my-photon.lvh.me or https://my-photon.lvh.me.

Next steps

  • Use the Devilbox intranet database tools to inspect the blog database.
  • Confirm the Photon CLI and generated project support your chosen PHP 8 runtime.
  • Add HTTPS trust and Xdebug if you continue development locally.