New to CraftCMS and linking to an existing project using DDEV

Question

The business I work for has just acquired another business whose CMS is CraftCMS. So am totally new to CraftCMS and how it operates. At the moment am finding it a steep / challenging learning curve.

So I'm using a Mac and everything seems to at the moment involve using Terminal. I've understood that I need to install stuff like:

• Brew
• Composer via Brew
• Docker via Brew
• DDEV via Brew

...which I've done.

That's as far as I've got as I need to connect to the existing CraftCMS which is live and I can't understand how I do it. Cannot find anything of use by Googling.

Current version of CraftCMS is version 3.7.67 but cannot update stuff from within admin portal as update buttons have disappeared and from what I can understand I need to use the above methodology to conenct in the first instance so update issues can be fixed.

Please can someone supply me with some simple instructions as to what I need to do?

Answer 1

You will need your existing Craft CMS project on your local computer, ideally through a Git repository, but you can also copy the files down from the server into a directory on your computer. You will also need a database export from the production site. You can access that via Utilities > Database Backup in the Craft control panel (typically, /admin).

Once you have the project files local and are in the project directory, you will initialize a new DDEV project:

ddev config --project-type=craftcms

Then start the project:

ddev start

At this point, you will likely need to install all dependencies via ddev composer install and then import the database.

I have everything written up here: https://craftquest.io/courses/ddev-and-craft-cms-quick-start-guide/43444 including a video walking through it.

Also, if you're new to Craft, it might be helpful to follow along with this free video series: https://craftquest.io/courses/craft-cms-quick-start-guide

The video series won't help you with your exact site, as every Craft site is configured differently, but it will help you understand the basic building blocks of Craft CMS sites.

Hope that helps!