Getting Started

Get Started

From starter template to finished website in minutes.

Clone the starter template

The fastest way to start a new atoll project:

git clone https://github.com/atoll-cms/atoll-starter my-site
cd my-site
composer install

The starter template comes with everything: core, default theme, example pages and a working configuration.

Start the development server

php bin/atoll dev 8080

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. The dev server watches for file changes and invalidates the cache automatically.

Create your first page

Create a Markdown file in content/pages/:

---
title: My First Page
excerpt: A short description for meta tags.
--- ## Welcome Here goes the content of your page in Markdown.

The page is immediately available at http://localhost:8080/my-first-page.

Customise the theme

The active theme is set in config.yaml:

appearance: theme: default

Theme CSS lives in themes/<name>/assets/main.css. Templates can be overridden at site level in templates/ without modifying the theme.

Deploy

atoll needs no build step. Simply upload the project folder to your server. Requirements:

  • PHP 8.2+ with extensions json, mbstring, openssl
  • Write permissions for cache/, backups/, content/
  • Apache with mod_rewrite or nginx with matching configuration

Core updates

php bin/atoll core:check
php bin/atoll core:update:remote

A backup is automatically created before every update. If something goes wrong:

php bin/atoll core:rollback

Help & community