Installation instructions

So you decided to try Quanta out? Great Idea!

Installing Quanta on your server is extremely fast and straightforward. Learn with us how to do it in 6 easy steps:

Step 1: verify requisites

Quanta can only be installed on any UNIX-based OS (Linux, OSx, etc.). 

Windows / XAMP users, in order to use Quanta, will have to install a VM (VMware, VirtualBox, etc.) (check why?)

Additional requisites:

Apache 2.4+ or Nginx 1.15+
PHP 5.6+ (PHP 7 strongly advised!)
Composer

For Apache users:
the rewrite and headers module must be enabled. When running Apache 2 on Linux, you can normally do that with the a2enmod rewrite ; a2enmod headers commands.

You will also need PHP's image/gd and curl libraries enabled.

Step 2: download Quanta

Clone our repository in your www folder.

Make sure your webserver has write access into the newly created quanta folder.

Debian example (where the webserver user is www-data):
chmod -R 644 quanta
chown -R www-data quanta

If your are working in a local environment (i.e. on an OSX machine) make sure to use the right username instead of www-data.

Step 3: create a local domain / hostname for your project

This step is necessary if you are running Quanta on a local server (i.e. your own computer), as  if you wish to reach your own Quanta installation using a browser, you need a host pointing to your own machine. 

In UNIX / OSX you normally find the hosts file at:

/etc/hosts

An example of configuration could be:

127.0.0.1       myproject.com

To verify that you had set up the domain correctly, you can open a terminal window and run this command:

ping myproject.com 

This command should respond with the IP address that you have setup in your hosts file.

Step 4: create a Virtual Host and point it to your Quanta folder

Do it the usual way.

For Apache:

In Apache2 you normally do this in:

(apache installation folder)/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

or in the

(apache installation folder)/sites-available/yoursite.conf   


using directives similar to those:

ServerAdmin aldo.tripiciano@gmail.com
DocumentRoot "/var/www/quanta"
ServerName myproject.com
ErrorLog "/usr/local/var/log/apache2/quanta-error.log"
CustomLog "/usr/local/var/log/apache2/quanta-access.log" combined

Restart Apache (i.e. apache2ctl restart), and you should be all set.

For Nginx:

The configuration to be used in Nginx, is contained in the quanta-nginx.conf file, included in your webroot.

Setup a server directive in your Nginx.conf file, and copy-paste the contents of quanta-nginx.conf inside it.

Make sure that you have setup the correct variables: 

listen is the port your nginx server is listening on

server_name should be your domain name

root is the system path of your quanta installation folder (not your specific quanta site folder!)

fastcgi params (i.e. fastcgi_pass) should be adapted (or even removed), according with your Nginx settings.

After doing the above steps, reload nginx (i.e. nginx -s reload) and proceed to the next step.

Step 5: Run the install script

From your Quanta folder, run this command:

./doctor myproject.com setup 

(change myproject.com to your domain, of course!).

The Quanta doctor will now do everything for you.

Step 6: Run composer

Composer is an useful tool that will automatically download all Quanta dependencies for you. 

After installing composer, while staying in the quanta folder, run: 

composer install

...et voilà! 

Well Done! Welcome in your new Quanta site!

If the install was performed correctly, you can now reach your site ( In our example, that would be http://myproject.com ), and you should see your brand new Quanta site's homepage. 

Congratulations! 

Now you can move to the next step: Customizing your first Quanta pages.

Got any problem during the installation process? 

1) Check the Troubleshooting pages
2) ...or ask the Community
3) ...or contact us!