2023 was another great year for Craft CMS:2023 in Review. There are now over 8'000 developers registered inCraft Discord according to the latestState of Craft talk by Brandon Kelly.

Do you want to try it quickly?

Looking forCraft v5?

Requirements

If you haven't installed a Docker runtime, you might be happy withOrbstack. Other alternatives:DDEV docs: Docker installation.

Afterwards you can simply install DDEV via homebrew (on Mac):

brew install ddev/ddev/ddev && mkcert -install

Check if it was successful withddev -v.

For other operating systems seeDDEV docs for setup instructions.

Install CraftCMS v4

Get the latest CraftCMS v4 version with this one command:

mkdir craft4-ddev && \   cd craft4-ddev && \  ddev config \    --project-type=craftcms \    --docroot=web \    --create-docroot \    --php-version="8.2" \    --database="mysql:8.0" \    --nodejs-version="20" && \  ddev start -y && \  ddev composer create -y --no-scripts --no-interaction "craftcms/craft:^4" && \  ddev craft install/craft \    --username=admin \    --password=password123 \    --email=admin@example.com \    --site-name=Testsite \    --language=en \    --site-url='$DDEV_PRIMARY_URL' && \  echo 'Nice, ready to launch!' && \  ddev launch

You will be greeted with the default index template:

You can also open the backend via

ddev launch /admin

and login viaadmin andpassword123.

Automate it

You can take this one step further and generate the folder (and therefore project names) dynamically. Thanks very much toAugust Miller for this recommendation!

TIMESTAMP_FOLDER=$(date +'%Y%m%d-%H%M');mkdir"craft4-$TIMESTAMP_FOLDER"&&cd"craft4-$TIMESTAMP_FOLDER"&&\ddev config\--project-type=craftcms\--docroot=web\--create-docroot\--php-version="8.2"\--database="mysql:8.0"\--nodejs-version="20"&&\ddev start-y&&\ddev composer create-y--no-scripts--no-interaction"craftcms/craft:^4"&&\ddev craftinstall/craft\--username=admin\--password=password123\--email=admin@example.com\--site-name=Testsite\--language=en\--site-url='$DDEV_PRIMARY_URL'&&\echo'Nice, ready to launch!'&&\ddev launch

But beware to not fill up your local harddrive too much. Delete DDEV projects withddev delete (orddev delete -O without snapshot) and keep your projects organized withddev list. You can also useddev delete -O <project-name>.

Try it out online with GitHub Codespaces

If you don't want to install Craft CMS v4 locally, you could also launch a new Github Codespace instance here:

• https://github.com/mandrasch/launch-codespace-with-ddev

Paste the command from above into the terminal:

Open port 8080 (web) in the simple browser or in a new browser tab in the ports section:

Have fun trying out Craft CMS!

More Resources:

• Welcome to Craft - official tutorial
• Craft CMS Discord