Our Drupal expert takes Drupal 8 for a test drive

Today I finally decided to take Drupal 8 for a spin as it is in beta 15 phase - so it must be getting closer. Also, it has just been announced that there will be an upgrade path between beta versions from now on: beta-to-beta-updates.  Surprisingly the install of Drupal 8 was almost identical to installing Drupal 7.

I use "Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca" which comes with PHP 5.5.9, which is a Drupal 8 minimum requirement.

First I created the database and configured my local apache vhost.

Then, in the command line, I downloaded the tarball:

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.0.0-beta14.tar.gz

then I extracted and renamed root folder:

 tar -zxvf drupal-8.0.0-beta14.tar.gz

 mv drupal-8.0.0-beta14 synth8

My local domain synth8.loc was already set up to "point" to the Drupal root folder.

I pointed my browser to synth8.loc, and voila the Drupal install screen appeared. It's similar to the Drupal 7 install screen, but with a better design and it's responsive.

I chose language = English, Installation profile = Standard

Then the familiar info screen appeared, similar to the one in Drupal 7. I corrected a few problems that I was prompted about:
 

1. Created 'files' folder and made it readable:

   cd /home/darko/PhpstormProjects/synth8/sites/default
   mkdir files
   chmod 777 files

2. Created the settings.php file

   cp default.settings.php settings.php 
   chmod 777 settings.php 
   

I refreshed the page and the database connection screen appeared. I entered the connection details to the database that I created earlier using Phpmyadmin. The installation of Drupal started.

After a minute or so the Account maintenance page appeared. I entered my admin account details and other information, such as time zone etc.

And that's it, the site was installed. So the install process of Drupal 8 was nice and easy, almost identical to the Drupal 7 install process.

The Drupal 8 admin interface also looks similar to previous Drupal versions, which is a nice surprise, considering that this release is the biggest change of the "under the hood" workings of Drupal. 

You can also read about Julia's Drupal 8 Adventure.