Welcome to the OctoberCMS HowTo Wiki & Cookbook

This is an old revision of the document!

This is a reference guide to common questions asked by beginners as well as by experienced users of OctoberCMS. Each how-to is written to find a quick solution for a specific problem. So hopefully it's helpful for those making their first steps with this CMS, but also for those looking for a brush-up.

To make things more understandable most how-to's are explained by practical examples, screenshots and videos in some cases.

Other sources:
Beside the docs and the forum on the OctoberCMS homepage, there are several sources to find tips, help and explanations:

Some tutorials on the OctoberCMS website
The October Tricks website
The Stackoverflow forum
The YouTube tutorials of Samuel Georges, see this playlist on the cms and this playlist on how to create a plugin
And of course the 47 (at the moment) OctoberCMS video tutorials made by Ivan Doric on his watch+learn channel

This Wiki: Table of Content

Introduction
Who OctoberCMS could be for
Who this wiki is for
Prerequisites
Conventions

Personal homepage
SMB company homepage
SMB service websites
Club homepage and administration
Webshop
Interactive, educational websites
Web/SaaS applications

How to do a basic installation
How to install themes
How to install plugins

How themes, layouts, pages, partials and content blocks are organized

The page area: Where to edit pages
The partials area: Where to edit partials
The layout area: Where to edit layouts
The content area: Where to edit content blocks
The assets area: Where to edit assets (like scripts, css)
The markup section: Where to edit html and twig code in OctoberCMS
The php code section: Where to edit php in OctoberCMS
JavaScript and jQuery: Where to edit in OctoberCMS
Previewing the results

How to use/change a theme
How to create a layout - part 1 the header
How to create a layout - part 2 the page body
How to create a layout - part 3 adding scripts
How to set up a new page
How to build a simple page
How, where and when to use partials
How, where and when to use content blocks
Where to place javaScript/jQuery libraries and how to integrate them
Where to place php libraries and how to integrate them

How to use plain html in OctoberCMS
How to use twig in OctoberCMS
How to use php in OctoberCMS
How to use sessions and session variables
How to read data from a model or plugin
How to do data queries
How to add a redirect
How to implement AJAX calls

How to use OctoberCMS as a WYSIWYG site creator
Visual page design
The User plugin: Handling restricted pages and services
The Blog plugin: How to setup a simple blog.
Translate: A must-have for multilingual sites

Developer Tools: An every-day inplace code-editor
List-switch: Small, simple, handy
Backend Elite: A Swiss-Knife for various occasions
The Expander plugin: Adapt existing plugins to individual requirements
PHP Sandbox: How to look inside

How to install the Builder plugin
How to prepare to create a database

An example scenario: The library database
Database, tables, models, controllers, … What the heck are they good for?
Preparing required tables for this example
Preparing models for the example tables
Preparing backend menues for the example tables
Preparing controllers for the example tables

Working with Relations
Example 1: Single media/file attachment. E.g. Adding a cover image to a book record
Example 2: Multiple media/file attachments. E.g. Adding some page views
Example 3: The hasOne relation. E.g. Adding a unique description to a book
Example 4: The hasMany relation. E.g. Adding reviews to a book
Example 5: The belongsTo relation. E.g. Adding one recommended (and predefined) agegroup to a book
Example 6: The belongsToMany relation. E.g. Adding genres to a book
Example 7: A more versatile belongsToMany relation. E.g. Adding a readers list