Create a New Roadiz Project

For new projects, Roadiz can be easily set up using the create-project command and our Skeleton.

# Create a new Roadiz project
composer create-project roadiz/skeleton my-website
cd my-website
# Create a local Dotenv to store your secrets
cp .env .env.local
# Edit your docker compose parameter in .env to fit your development environment (OS, UID).
# .env file will be tracked by Git
#
# Customize docker-compose.yml file to set your stack name
#
# Initialize your Docker environment
docker compose build
docker compose up -d --force-recreate

Warning:Roadiz and Symfony heavily rely on Docker and Docker Compose. If you’re not using these tools yet, we recommend learning them.

You can still use Roadiz without Docker, but you will need to manually install and configure a PHP environment, a MySQL database, and a web server. If you're not using Docker, ignore the docker compose exec app prefix in the following commands.

Note: Roadiz v2 is a complete rewrite as a true Symfony Bundle. It behaves like a standard Symfony app and is intended as a headless CMS with API Platform. You can still use Controllers and Twig templates, but there is no more theme logic—just Symfony Bundles and your own code in the ./src folder.

When prompted by Composer, choose no for versioning history. This will replace roadiz/skeleton's Git repository with your own. You can then customize all files in your project and track them using Git. A default .gitignore is provided to prevent committing sensitive configuration settings, ensuring different setups for development and production without merge conflicts.

Generate JWT Private and Public Keys

When using composer create-project, JWT secrets and certificates should be automatically generated. If not, generate them manually:

# Generate Symfony secrets
docker compose exec app bin/console secrets:generate-keys;
# Set a random passphrase for Application secret and JWT keys
docker compose exec app bin/console secrets:set APP_SECRET --random;
docker compose exec app bin/console secrets:set JWT_PASSPHRASE --random;
# Generate your key pair
docker compose exec app bin/console lexik:jwt:generate-keypair;

Install Database

# Create and migrate Roadiz database schema
docker compose exec app bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate
# Migrate any existing data types
docker compose exec app bin/console app:install
# Install base Roadiz fixtures, default translation, roles, and settings
docker compose exec app bin/console install
# Stop workers to force restart them
docker compose exec app php bin/console messenger:stop-workers
# Clear cache
docker compose exec app bin/console cache:clear
# Create your admin account
docker compose exec app bin/console users:create -m username@roadiz.io -b -s username

Then connect to http://localhost:${YOUR_PORT}/rz-admin to access your freshly created Roadiz back office.

Note: If you set up Traefik on your local environment, you can reach your Roadiz app using domain.test without specifying a non-default port. Change the HOSTNAME variable in .env and update your local DNS by adding 127.0.0.1 domain.test to your /etc/hosts file.