Grav Flat-File CMS Installation and Setup

Installation and Setup of Grav (Flat-File CMS)

Grav does not require a database. Minimum requirements: PHP 7.3.6+ (recommended 8.1+), extensions mbstring, curl, ctype, dom, gd, json, xml, zip. Apache or Nginx.

Installation

# Option 1: Direct download
curl -L https://getgrav.org/download/core/grav-admin/latest -o grav-admin.zip
unzip grav-admin.zip -d /var/www/mysite
cd /var/www/mysite

# Option 2: Via Composer
composer create-project getgrav/grav /var/www/mysite

# Set permissions
find . -type f | xargs chmod 664
find . -type d | xargs chmod 775
find . -type d -name cache | xargs chmod 777
find . -type d -name logs | xargs chmod 777
find . -type d -name images | xargs chmod 777
find . -type d -name assets | xargs chmod 777

Nginx Configuration

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name mysite.com;
    root /var/www/mysite;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # Protect system directories
    location ~ ^/(\.git|cache|logs|backup|bin|system|vendor|\.env) {
        return 403;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

system.yaml Configuration

# user/config/system.yaml
home:
  alias: /home

pages:
  theme: my-theme
  markdown:
    extra: true          # enable Markdown Extra (tables, footnotes)
    auto_line_breaks: false

cache:
  enabled: true
  driver: auto
  lifetime: 604800

debugger:
  enabled: false

errors:
  display: 0
  log: true

languages:
  supported: [ru, en]
  include_default_lang: false
  translations: true

site.yaml Configuration

# user/config/site.yaml
title: My Site
author:
  name: Company
  email: [email protected]

metadata:
  description: Site description

taxonomies: [category, tag]

summary:
  enabled: true
  size: 300

GPM — Package Manager

# Update package list
bin/gpm index

# Install plugin
bin/gpm install form login admin sitemap feed

# Update everything
bin/gpm update

# Update Grav core
bin/gpm selfupgrade

# List installed packages
bin/gpm list

Create Admin User

# Via CLI (without web installer)
bin/plugin login newuser \
  --user=admin \
  --password=Admin123! \
  [email protected] \
  --name="Admin Name" \
  --admin=true

Environment Configuration Customization

# user/config/env/production/system.yaml — production overrides
cache:
  enabled: true
  driver: redis
  redis:
    socket: '/var/run/redis/redis.sock'

debugger:
  enabled: false

# user/config/env/development/system.yaml
cache:
  enabled: false

debugger:
  enabled: true
  shutdown:
    close_connection: true

Environment switching via GRAV_ENVIRONMENT=production variable or via setup.php:

// setup.php in root
$environment = getenv('GRAV_ENVIRONMENT') ?: 'production';
define('GRAV_ENVIRONMENT', $environment);