Install Chandra

We use good number of packages to provide great functionality without re-inventing wheel.

We need to add those packages to composer.json, publish vendor configurations and finally do migrations.

packages used

Package name	repo	manual
cartalyst/sentinel	repo	manual
laravelcollective/html	repo	manual
cviebrock/eloquent-sluggable	repo	manual
cviebrock/eloquent-taggable	repo	manual

Delete existing migration files

Since we are not relying on default migration tables, please remove following two files from database/migrations folder

2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php
2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table.php

Otherwise you will get error at later stage of installation.

Add middlware

Chandra ships with two middlewares one for admin and another for user.

To be able to use them, we should define them in app\Http\Kernel.php

Open app\Http\Kernel.php and in $routeMiddleware add following

'SentinelUser' => \App\Http\Middleware\SentinelUser::class,
'SentinelAdmin' => \App\Http\Middleware\SentinelAdmin::class,

Install Packages

Add Package to composer

Now add above mentioned packages in composer.json in require array

"cartalyst/sentinel": "2.0.*",
"laravelcollective/html": "5.1.*",
"cviebrock/eloquent-sluggable": "dev-master",
"cviebrock/eloquent-taggable": "dev-master",

update vendors

now hit composer update in terminal to download above packages.

Add service providers

Open config/app.php and add following lines in the $providers array

Cartalyst\Sentinel\Laravel\SentinelServiceProvider::class,
Collective\Html\HtmlServiceProvider::class,
Cviebrock\EloquentSluggable\SluggableServiceProvider::class,
Cviebrock\EloquentTaggable\ServiceProvider::class,

In the $aliases array add following facades

'Activation' => Cartalyst\Sentinel\Laravel\Facades\Activation::class,
'Reminder'   => Cartalyst\Sentinel\Laravel\Facades\Reminder::class,
'Sentinel'   => Cartalyst\Sentinel\Laravel\Facades\Sentinel::class,
'Form' => Collective\Html\FormFacade::class,
'Html' => Collective\Html\HtmlFacade::class,

publish vendors

now we need to publish vendor files so that they will publish config files, migrations.

Excecute following command in command prompt/terminal

php artisan taggable:table
php artisan vendor:publish

Now we need to add user, groups etc tables to database, to do so in your command prompt, execute following code

php artisan migrate

Note: please check all files in database\migrations to know what fields are being added.

setting up config to use our model

since we have different requirements (extra fields in users table), we need to change sentinel config to use our user Model,

to do that open config/cartalyst.sentinel.php

at line 56, find

'model' => 'Cartalyst\Sentinel\Users\EloquentUser',

replace it with

'model' => 'App\User',

Add admin user

As database tables have been setup, we need to add admin user to be able to login into adminCP.

Run following command in your command prompt

php artisan db:seed --class=AdminSeeder

A default admin user with user with username [e-mail] and password admin will be created

Optional: If you wish to use a different username or password, please open database\seeds\AdminSeeder.php and edit values around lines 14-18

upload directory permissions

user's profile pics will be uploaded into public/uploads/users

so we need to provide write access for that folder

to do so, please run following command in your command prompt/terminal

chmod 775 public/uploads/users
chmod 775 public/uploads/blog

Congratulations! You are ready to rock the world!!