Installing Symfony 3.x on DigitalOcean

This article was originally published at Cloudways: How To Install Symfony 3 On Cloud Server

Symfony is the leading, modern PHP framework that is used to create secure websites and web applications with the help of its different components. It’s a popular MVC framework which saves time with handling typical development tasks such as content rendering, directing traffic, creating persistent models, etc.

To install and run Symfony 3, your system needs to fulfill a list of following requirements:

• PHP with a minimum version of 5.5.9
• Composer
• JSON enabled
• ctype enabled
• date.timezone should be set (default timezone will not work)

Note: If you want to use any optional component, see these Requirements for Running Symfony.

If you are wondering how to install Symfony on Cloudways, you can simply follow this easy step-by-step guide. Ready? Lets begin!

Step 1: Prepare your server and application

Signup or Login to your Cloudways account and create a new server by selecting PHP Stack from the “Select your Application” drop-down. Also, Name your App, Server & Project accordingly.

Step 2: Select Cloud Provider

Now select your favorite Cloud provider.

Step 3: Server Size and Location

In “Server Size” field, scale up to 1GB.

Keeping the latency difference in mind, now select your server location in “Location” field.

To launch your server, click “Launch” button at the bottom right side of the page and wait for a while. A working example:

Step 4: Server Timezone

Once launched, change your server timezone as it’s the requirement to install Symfony (default value for timezone is not supported by Symfony). Under “Server Management”, go to “Settings & Packages.”*

In “Basic” tab you can see “PHP Timezone.” Change server timezone to your respective location.

Step 5: SSH Terminal

After changing server timezone, in “Server Management” click on “Launch SSH Terminal” under “Master Credentials” where you can find your login credentials for SSH Terminal.

Login to SSH with your Master Credentials.

Step 6: Emptying public_html directory

Now delete all files from your public_html directory. Navigate to your public_html folder and remove all files using rm -Rf * command.

Step 7: Symfony 3 Installation

Now in your “public_html” directory, run the following command to install Symfony 3 on your server:

composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition your_project_name "3.0.*"

for 3.1:

composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition your_project_name "3.1"

Step 8: DB Information and Finishing Project Installation

Now Symfony will start downloading to your server. During downloading, it will ask for your database information.

You can find out your DB information under “Application Management” go to “Access detail” and see MySQL Access.

After providing database information, in very few seconds you will see the following screen which means that Symfony has been installed successfully.

Step 9: Composer Repositories

Now we will check if there is any need to install or update composer dependencies required for the application by using composer install command. Navigate to your project directory and run the command.

Step 10: Installation Completed

After a successful installation, in “Application Management” go to “Access detail” and copy your Application URL.

Open your favorite web browser and access to Welcome page to Symfony by the following URL:

http://your_application_url/your_project_directory/web

This is how the Symfony Welcome page should look like:

There you have it! Your Symfony Project is ready for development. If you have any issues in installing Symfony 3, feel free to comment below. And if you are still not a part of the Cloudways family, then you can start your FREE TRIAL here and experience ease at its best.