Installing Drupal

Go directly to Install Drupal using DDEV for local development if you are in a hurry. If not, read Before a Drupal installation. Then read the other sections if needed.

Chapter 3 of the Drupal User Guide covers server requirements, additional tools, preparing for installation, and running the installation script. Chapter 4 covers the next steps that should be done after the installation script has been completed. This guide covers a significant portion of the same material. These pages cover more options than the User Guide, with somewhat less detailed instructions.

Before a Drupal installation

Meet Drupal's system requirements on either a local or remote server.

Install Drupal using DDEV for local development

The Drupal community recommends using DDEV for local development.

Get the code

Install automatically, manually, locally, or developers

Install dependencies with Composer

After updating the codebase with Git, the required PHP libraries must be installed with Composer

Create a database

Create a database for Drupal to use

Run the installer

Run the installation script

Check status and protect

Check the status of your site

Add Composer to an existing site

How to convert an existing Drupal site to a composer-managed project. Step by step guide to adding composer to manually installed site.

Drupal Quick Start Command

Launch a local demo version of Drupal.

Trusted Host settings

Protecting against HTTP HOST Header attacks

Using a load balancer or reverse proxy

When running large Drupal installations, you may find yourself with a web server cluster that lives behind a load balancer.

Guide maintainers

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