Get Started

There are two ways to get going: scaffold a brand-new project with Castor Starter, or add a single bundle to an existing Symfony application. Both take a few minutes.

Option A — Scaffold a new project

Castor Starter is a Castor task runner that automates the whole setup: Symfony, Docker infrastructure, aropixel/admin-bundle, and any companion bundle you need.

Prerequisites: Castor, Docker + Docker Compose, PHP + Composer, and the GitHub CLI (gh) if you plan to contribute back to a bundle.

# 1. Clone the project
git clone git@github.com:aropixel/castor-starter.git
cd castor-starter

# 2. Install dependencies
composer install

# 3. Make it available anywhere on your machine
echo "alias castor-starter='\"$(pwd)/vendor/bin/castor\" --castor-file=\"$(pwd)/castor.php\"'" >> ~/.$(basename $SHELL)rc
source ~/.$(basename $SHELL)rc

Scaffold a complete admin project, with every companion bundle:

castor-starter aropixel:new:admin my-project --all

That single command gives you a ready-to-use administration with a default admin account, a Docker stack (PHP 8.2+, Nginx, MySQL, Varnish, Mailpit, phpMyAdmin) based on jolicode/docker-starter, Clever Cloud deployment config, image management via LiipImagineBundle, and a randomized admin route slug for security.

→ Full details on the Castor Starter page.

Option B — Add a bundle to an existing project

Require the core bundle, create your first admin user, and you're in:

composer require aropixel/admin-bundle
php bin/console aropixel:admin:create-user

Then layer in whichever companion bundle your project needs:

composer require aropixel/page-bundle   # visual page builder
composer require aropixel/blog-bundle   # posts & categories
composer require aropixel/menu-bundle   # navigation menus

Each bundle ships its own installation guide with entity extension, Doctrine mapping, and routing — see the ecosystem overview for links.

Requirements

PHP	8.2 or above
Symfony	6.4 or 7.x
License	MIT, on every repository
Languages	French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Czech

→ Curious what it looks like before you install anything? See it in action on the homepage.