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How to get started on GovCMS SaaS

The GovCMS Knowledge Base has a number of great articles about how to get started with GovCMS, however that is all protected behind having a login, which you only get once you are onboarded to a project.

So the question is, how do you learn how to play around with GovCMS BEFORE then.

Simple, you use this guide.

Step 1 - Prerequites

There are a number of things you need before you can get started, and you better hope you are on Mac. While there are Windows options, they aren't as great.

  • Ahoy
    • Ahoy is a command line tool that performs batch operations with a single command.
    • Can be installed via Brew.
  • Pygmy
    • This is a local stack for container development. Kinda like WAMP/LAMP back in the day.
    • Can be installed via Brew.
  • Docker desktop
    • Used to manage the containers themselves.
    • Can be installed as a package from the website.

Step 2 - Scaffold

Once you have that software installed, you need to checkout the publicly available GitHub repo called GovCMS Scaffold.

git clone git@github.com:govCMS/scaffold.git my_test_project

The repo itself provides instructions, just run:

ahoy init project_name type version
eg:
ahoy init my_test_project saas 10

Step 3 - Install

Once the init finishes, we need to build the containers for the project, for that, run:

ahoy build
or
COMPOSE_BAKE=false ahoy build

As of writing, there is a bug in the container build process where some containers are built faster than others and they aren't ready when they are waiting on a slower one.  The COMPOSE_BAKE=false addon can fix it if ahoy build is failing for you.

After that finishes, you are almost done.  In fact, if you open up the URL it has created for you, you will see the Drupal site install screen. But that can be slow, so instead run:

ahoy install

This will install all the modules, set all the settings and get everything ready for you.

Once that has finished, you can run:

ahoy login

And that will provide a one time login link for you to use to get into your local site.

And boom, you have a GovCMS SaaS site up and running, and you can now get used to how it works and what can and can't be done.

 

We have an article about the contents of a GovCMS repository, and what each folder and file does, so check it out to learn more.