Installation

Melis Platform Community Edition is free and open-source (OSL-3.0). Three install paths are available — pick the one that fits your workflow.

Where to find Melis Platform

All official repositories live under the melisplatform organisation on GitHub:

Repository	What it is
melis-docker	Ready-to-run Docker stack — the fastest path to a working platform
melis-platform-skeleton	Project skeleton for Composer & source installs

The skeleton is also available on Packagist as melisplatform/melis-platform-skeleton, and the Docker images are published on Docker Hub — they are pulled automatically when you bring the Compose stack up.

Choose your install path

Path	Command	Best for
Docker	git clone https://github.com/melisplatform/melis-docker.git	Demos, local dev, no local PHP setup needed
Composer	composer create-project melisplatform/melis-platform-skeleton	New projects on your own Apache/PHP stack
GitHub source	git clone --recursive https://github.com/melisplatform/melis-platform-skeleton.git	Contributors, teams that want full Git history

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Requirements

For Docker, everything is bundled — skip to Option A below. For Composer or source installs:

• PHP 8.1 or 8.3 with the extensions: intl, mysqli, pdo_mysql, gd (freetype/jpeg/webp), zip, curl, mbstring, exif, xml (and opcache recommended).
• MySQL 8 (the stack uses MySQL 8.4).
• Composer 2 and Git (for the Composer and source paths).
• Apache or Nginx with mod_rewrite / try_files pointing to public/.

Option A — Docker (recommended)

Standalone Docker (melis-docker)

The fastest path for anyone starting fresh:

git clone https://github.com/melisplatform/melis-docker.git
cd melis-docker/app/latest
docker-compose build --pull
docker-compose up -d
# Open http://localhost:8080

The PHP version and exposed port are configurable in app/latest/.env.

Dev skeleton Docker (make-based)

If you already cloned the skeleton project, the Makefile wraps Docker Compose:

make build          # copies the local env file and builds the image
make start          # starts the containers (php, db, phpmyadmin)
make first_install  # creates & imports the database, runs migrations, unpacks media

That's it. The stack exposes:

Service	URL
Front office	http://localhost
Backoffice	http://localhost/melis
phpMyAdmin	http://localhost:8080

Default credentials

Backoffice login: admin / password. phpMyAdmin: server melis-db-dev, user admin / password, database dev.

Change credentials before going to production

The default admin/password credentials are for local development only. Change them — and the database password — before exposing any instance publicly.

Useful Make targets

make stop      # stop the stack
make start     # start it again
make ssh       # shell into the PHP container (melis-dev)
make logs      # tail the application logs
make down      # stop and remove containers + volumes

Under the hood, make build copies iac/melis/docker/config/.env.local to .env and builds iac/melis/docker/Dockerfile.local; make first_install imports install/first_install.sql.tar.gz and applies the Flyway migrations in flyway/sql/.

Option B — Composer (new project on your stack)

# 1. Create the project from the skeleton
composer create-project melisplatform/melis-platform-skeleton my-project
cd my-project
composer install

# 2. Create the database (utf8mb4)
mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE DATABASE myproject CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"

# 3. Import the base data, then run migrations
mysql -u root -p myproject < install/first_install.sql
flyway -configFiles=flyway/conf/flyway.conf migrate

Point an Apache virtual host at the project's public/ directory and declare the two Melis environment variables:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/path/to/my-project/public"
    <Directory "/path/to/my-project/public">
        Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
        DirectoryIndex index.php
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ServerName www.mysite.local
    SetEnv MELIS_PLATFORM "development"
    SetEnv MELIS_MODULE   "MelisDemoCms"
</VirtualHost>

Add 127.0.0.1 www.mysite.local to your hosts file, reload Apache, then open http://www.mysite.local/melis.

Option C — GitHub source (contributors)

Each module lives in its own repository, included as a Git submodule:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/melisplatform/melis-platform-skeleton.git
# Already cloned? Pull all submodules:
git submodule update --init --recursive

cd melis-platform-skeleton
composer install

Then follow the same virtual host and database setup as Option B above.

The two Melis environment variables

Every Melis install is driven by two variables (set in docker-compose.yml for Docker, or via SetEnv for Apache):

• MELIS_PLATFORM — identifies the environment. It selects the configuration file config/autoload/platforms/<MELIS_PLATFORM>.php, which holds the database connection (so MELIS_PLATFORM=local loads config/autoload/platforms/local.php).
• MELIS_MODULE — identifies which site module is served as the front office for this domain.

Next steps

• Architecture & concepts — the mental model behind Melis.
• Build a website (CMS) — pages, templates and site trees.
• Create your first tool — add your own backoffice tool.