Installation

Requirements

Before installing, make sure your environment meets these requirements:

• PHP 8.1 or higher
• Laravel 10, 11, 12, or 13
• MySQL 5.7+ (recommended) or MariaDB 10.3+ — the officially supported database

Database support

FalconCMS is built and tested on MySQL / MariaDB, which are the only fully supported databases. We strongly recommend MySQL 8+ for production.

SQLite is not recommended. It may work for a quick local look, but some features rely on MySQL-specific behaviour and will not work correctly on SQLite. Do not use SQLite for production or for evaluating the full feature set.

PostgreSQL and SQL Server are not supported.

Install via Composer

composer require falconcms/falconcms

Run the Installer

php artisan falcon:install

This single command handles everything:

• Runs all database migrations
• Publishes assets (CSS, JS)
• Publishes the default theme
• Creates a storage symlink
• Creates the default admin user

INFO

Your admin credentials will be displayed in the terminal after installation.

Access the Dashboard

Open your browser and go to:

http://your-app.test/admin

Log in with the credentials shown after falcon:install.

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Manual Steps (if needed)

If you prefer to run steps individually:

# Run migrations only
php artisan migrate

# Publish assets
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=falcon-cms-assets --force

# Publish themes
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=falcon-cms-themes --force

# Create storage symlink
php artisan storage:link

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Updating

From the dashboard (recommended)

Go to Dashboard → Updates. When a new version is available, tick the backup confirmation and click Run Update Now — FalconCMS pulls the latest release with Composer, runs falcon:update (migrations, assets, themes, cache) and refreshes the OPcache for you. No terminal needed.

Manually (if the dashboard updater can't run)

Some hosts disable exec() or ship without a CLI Composer. In that case, run:

composer update falconcms/falconcms
php artisan falcon:update

INFO

falcon:update refreshes assets, themes and permissions without touching your content. The dashboard updater runs exactly these steps for you.

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Uninstalling

FalconCMS ships with two uninstall commands.

Full removal

Removes everything cleanly — database tables, the trait the installer added to App\Models\User, published files, and the Composer package itself — so your app keeps booting with no leftover errors:

php artisan falcon:uninstall

Run it before composer remove

falcon:uninstall is part of the package, so run it while the package is still installed — it performs the composer remove for you at the end. Running composer remove falconcms/falconcms first would leave the HasCmsPermissions trait referenced in your User model and crash the app.

Options:

Option	Effect
--all	Also drop shared Laravel tables (users, sessions, cache, jobs, …) for a full wipe
--force	Skip the confirmation prompt
--keep-files	Keep published views, themes and assets
--no-composer	Don't run composer remove automatically

Database only

Drops just the FalconCMS tables (and their migration records), leaving the package code, published files and User model trait in place — handy to wipe data and start fresh with php artisan falcon:install or php artisan migrate:

php artisan falcon:uninstall-db

Supports --all and --force.