Install Concrete 5 step by step

A CMS called Concrete 5 getting lot of buzz since that past months, so  i test it to see what are his differences compare to others CMS on the market. In short terms, the slogan of Concrete 5 is to giving the power of CMS to the users who are completely dumb in CMS. You know, it’s the kind of users who ask question about to install Wordpress or Joomla despite the fact that 2 CMS are easy to install. The concept behind Concrete 5 is that the page editing and site’s configuration are done directly from the front end. This offer a great easy to use CMS, but i think this is heavy script due to this easiness. Moreover, Concrete 5 offer two methods of installation, first is that you must pay around 15 dollars and the guys behind Concrete 5 will install it for you and you have to create only the content. But you can also download the source and install it like any CMS in the market. For testing purpose, i use Xampplite who is a light version of Xampp, the package who include Apache, MySQL and PHP. Xampplite can be easy installed on Windows and even beginners can use it to get a local server for their testing projects.
So, you must download the source of Concrete 5 and browse the different categories of the site to get the source. Yeah because the guys of Concrete 5 want you pay and their promoting the hosting solution, but no way boy ! In Xampplite, the web directory is called htdocs, so you create a directory named concrete5 (any name will work) and you copy the content of the Concrete 5 zip in this directory.


Next, you must create a database for the Concrete 5 installation, so go to the PhpMyAdmin of your local server and create a database called concrete5.

Next, open your browser and launch the installation of Concrete 5 by taping the URL of the Concrete 5 directory in the htdocs. Generally, the URL of a local web server is localhost, so our address for the install of Concrete 5 is : http://locahost/concrete5. You get the screen below :

This screen check if you web server is able to install Concrete 5 and all the field are green, so it’s fine and click on Continue to installation.

The most important screen of the installation of Concrete 5. You provide the name of your website, a mail address, a password and the information to connect to your database. For a local MySQL, the information are generally :

• Server : localhost
• User : root
• Password : yourpassword
• Database name : concrete5

By default, the MySQL of Xampplite has no password, but you can create one if you want. In the bottom of the page, Concrete 5 let you install sample data to get started if you are a beginner in Concrete. So, we check the option to install the data and we continue.
The next screen is going to install Concrete 5 by create the various tables and options. This can be take some time depending of the performance of your server.
When the process is done, Concrete 5 display a message saying that the installation has finished. And that all ! You have installed Concrete 5 in less than 3 minutes, but it’s not over yet.

 

Using Concrete 5

First glance of the frontend of Concrete 5 to remind us the default theme of Wordpress. But it’s the first and last similarity with Wordpress…


If you display the frontend  just after the install of Concrete 5, you are already connected as admin. One thing to remember about the connection to the administration of Concrete 5, you’ll use, the admin user to connect first and you can change it later and we strongly recommend to change this user name because admin is the most used by hackers when they attack a site. So you ask me, where are the admin panel of Concrete 5 ? And this CMS has no administration part like Joomla or Drupal. Instead, move your mouse in the left upper corner of the site and you see a Edit button.

You click on Edit Page and you can select any parts of the page  to modify. For example, we click on the title area of the site and a editor will pop up like this :

You are right, the editor is very similar to the one in Joomla. So you modify your title here, you can modify the link, add image and so long and when you click on Save, the changes are immediately  updated on the Frontend. That why Concrete 5 is getting lot of buzz around the web. The easiness of the configuration is astonishing ! And this kind of edits is possible in all elements of the page. For example, you want add a new element in the Sidebar so, you click on the sidebar and choose Add Block :

For my example, i choose to add a Guestbook module (there are many modules who is embedded with Concrete 5) and in second, our guestbook is showing in the frontend at the end of the sidebar :

But honestly, i don’t like so much this kind of CMS because he need huge resources from the web server to handle all the options. In fact, we can compare Concrete 5 to a Prestashop Like, but Concrete is just more powerful. I think that Concrete 5 is a ideal CMS for the very beginners in CMS. Marketers and online sellers  can also use it without the hassle of a complex configuration. In fact, the number of users who use Concrete is growing so fast that he’ll can compete with Prestashop or even Joomla in the next years.

A video to show you how to install Concrete 5 ans some practical examples as well

Mots clés Technorati : install concrete 5

Posted in: CMS