Silex Base Template

Basic Silex project for a simple website.

I'm presenting here a clean (-ish) starting point for a website written in PHP on Silex. This is a direct port of my Django base project.

Prerequisites

You'll need to have a web server installed and configured with PHP for this to work. I really recommend XAMPP, especially for Windows users. Once you've done that you can proceed.

You'll also need Node.js and npm installed and working.

Configuration

A couple of files need changing to get the site working for you.

1. Copy config.yaml.dist and rename it to config.yaml. Fill in the fields according to their descriptions and save.
2. Locate blog.coffee and fill in the blogId and apiKey fields to get your blog working.

Building

Clone the project down and open the folder in your favourite editor. It's a JetBrains PhpStorm project but you can use whichever paid/free software takes your fancy.

Before anything else, note that this project uses the Composer package manager. Install composer (see their website) and run:

composer install

Or alternatively, if you're using the PHAR (make sure the php.exe executable is in your PATH):

php composer.phar install

Then, install the npm packages necessary to build and run the website. Run the following in your terminal in the project root directory:

npm install

This will install Bower which will allow you to install the assets the website requires (Bootstrap, jQuery etc.) using the command:

bower install

Gulp will also have been installed. This will compile the Less and CoffeeScript into CSS and JavaScript ready for production. Do this using the command:

gulp

This command will need running again every time you make a change to a Less or CoffeeScript file. If you're working on them, run gulp watch in a terminal to watch for file changes and compile accordingly.

Limitations

I'm not a web designer. The site isn't going to bring a tear to your eye with its beauty.