Quick Start Guide

The easiest way to quickly setup and install dotCMS starter site is by using the standard dotCMS Docker images.

Installation Steps

1. Download and install Docker (or Docker Desktop)
   • Instructions for your given platform can be found on Docker's site.
2. Ensure that you have docker compose installed.
   • Open a terminal and type docker compose.
   • For more information, or if you would like more information on the messages you receive, please see the Docker Compose documentation.
3. Download a dotCMS docker-compose example .yml file.
   • These examples are taken from the dotCMS Docker Github repo to download docker-compose.yml examples for:
     • An Empty dotCMS instance.
     • A Demo dotCMS instance (with the full dotCMS starter site, like the dotCMS Demo Site).
4. Use the following one-line command to download and run dotCMS in Docker:

   wget -O docker-compose.yml https://dotcms.com/run/demo && docker-compose up
   

Important Notes

• Make sure that docker has enough memory to run the containers required by dotCMS. We recommend dedicating at least 2 CPUs and at least 6GB RAM assigned to your docker environment. On Windows and OSX, you can adjust these settings in the Docker Desktop preferences.
• The password used to access the dotCMS admin@dotcms.com account will be displayed in the server logs on startup. It would look something like this:

  ####################################################################################################
  ##                   NOTICE: admin@dotcms.com password set to Bzqk#s4=TCwe3@                      ##
  ##                     WARNING: Once logged-in. Please change this password.                      ##
  ####################################################################################################
  

• If you are loading the full starter site, dotCMS may take 5 minutes or more to startup the first time.
  • You will know that the server has started up when you see message like this in the log files:

    20-May-20XX 17:41:24.463 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in 157516 ms
    

• These docker compose examples use an externalized Elasticsearch (open distro) server and a Postgres database.
• Any errors will be reported in the dotcms.log file.
  • If you are unable to start dotCMS and need assistance, please include this log file with your request.
• To stop the Docker image, hit crtl+C in the console where you started the image.
  • This will stop the Docker image, but if you wish to restart the image, you will also need to run docker-compose down before the restart.
• To run the Docker image in the backgroud (and tail the logs), run:

  docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d && docker-compose logs -f
  

Accessing your dotCMS

To view the front-end of the dotCMS site, enter the following address in your browser.

Please note To access the dotCMS Admin tools you should always use a HTTPS/SSL port as many of the cookies used to manage session are marked https-only:

https://local.dotcms.site:8443

To login to the Admin console on the starter site:

1. In your browser, go to address https://local.dotcms.site:8443/dotAdmin
2. Login using the admin credentials from the dotCMS log files:

   User:	admin@dotcms.com
   Password:	(displayed in the startup log files. See Important Notes above)