Installation / Composer / Install with Composer

Note: You are currently reading the documentation for Bolt 3.7. Looking for the documentation for Bolt 5.2 instead?

Since Bolt 3.0 production installs are based around Composer installation methodology, by default. Even if you install from a distribution archive file, you are basically getting a pre-prepared Composer install.

Getting Composer¶

If you don't have Composer installed on your system already, it can be obtained from the Composer project website, or by running the following command:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Tip: The Bolt documentation assumes that you have renamed composer.phar to composer. If not, you can use php composer.phar wherever composer is used in command line snippets.

Interactive Install¶

To start a basic interactive install, navigate to the parent directory of your desired project (site), and run the following:

composer create-project bolt/composer-install:3.7.x <MYPROJECT> --prefer-dist

NOTE: Change <MYPROJECT> to the name of your project before running the installer.

The install process will ask you some questions about your required install strategy, you can install Bolt inside a single directory, or you can install the public assets inside a public directory and keep the application code outside the web root.

After this command, continue with the steps as in Quick install: Next steps

Tip: Always run composer update after doing the initial setup. This ensures you that you're running the latest versions of packages, suitable for your platform.

Choosing an install type¶

Depending on your needs, there are two different approaches, which offer more options:

• Creating a new Composer based project
• Adding Bolt to an existing Composer based project