Developer Installation Guide

The website is currently being hosted on Heroku with a Laravel backend implementation and MySQL as the database. As such, backend developers will need to install PHP7, MySQL, and Git. Frontend developers will need to install PHP7 and Git.

Installing Git

1. For easy installation, it is recommend to install the GitHub Desktop Client for Mac and Windows Machines
2. On Debian machines, running sudo apt install git should install the git CLI. As a note, you will need to authenticate your terminal by generating a token. Please refer to the GitHub Docs for details.

Install PHP

Windows

1. Head to the official PHP download page and down the current stable PHP7 version.
2. Extract the folder on your desktop.
3. Run php.exe
4. Open command prompt and verify installation by running php --verison

Mac

1. Download the brew package manager for Mac
2. Run in Terminal brew install php
3. Verify installation by running php -v

Debian/Ubuntu

1. Open terminal and run the following command sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php
2. Verify installation by running php -v

Install MySQL

Debian/Ubuntu

1. Open the terminal and issue the following command: sudo apt install mysql-server
2. This will install the MySQL server package (you can use apt info mysql-server to see package into)
3. Verify the package is installed by running mysql --version

Mac

1. Download the brew package manager for Mac
2. Run in Terminal brew install mysql
3. Verify the package is installed by running mysql --version

Windows

1. TBD

Running a local Laravel server

Laravel comes built-in with the ability to run a local webserver using just PHP. In order to run a local version of the website and see your changes, please clone the Git repository. Then open the root file directory of this project using your terminal (cd location\of\your\folder) and run php artisan serve. A local webserver should automatically open.

Learning Laravel

Laravel has the most extensive and thorough documentation and video tutorial library of all modern web application frameworks, making it a breeze to get started with the framework.

If you don't feel like reading, Laracasts can help. Laracasts contains over 1500 video tutorials on a range of topics including Laravel, modern PHP, unit testing, and JavaScript. Boost your skills by digging into our comprehensive video library.

License

Open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.