Quick start

Once the components are installed, this page shows you how to open your first project in five minutes. If you have not installed Coduva yet, follow the Installation page first.

1. Start the services

1. Open Coduva. The first screen is the Control center.
2. Click Start all in the upper right.
3. Wait for the status of both service cards to read Running:
   • Nginx — Web server · PHP FastCGI. The card shows the line "PHP 8.4 · FastCGI processes" and four green bars (4/4) for the four processes in the pool.
   • MariaDB — Database.

When the services are running, the Services started notification appears at the bottom right, the strip above the cards reads All good, and two green dots light up in the Services section at the bottom of the sidebar.

If a service does not start, the reason appears in the Service operation failed notification at the bottom right. The most common cause is that another program is using the port: the service card shows Port in use and says which program holds the port (for example IIS or WampServer). For a fix, see Troubleshooting.

First start

MariaDB creates its data folder the first time it starts; this can take a few seconds. The root user has no password and can be accessed only from this computer.

2. Open the default site

Click the localhost button on the Nginx card or in the status strip. Coduva's welcome page opens at http://localhost/. The page, titled Your local server is ready, shows:

• The versions and ports of the web server, PHP and the database
• Your projects and their addresses (if you have no projects yet, it shows No projects yet.)
• The main PHP settings (memory_limit, upload_max_filesize, etc.) and file locations
• The installed PHP extensions, as a searchable list
• phpMyAdmin and phpinfo() links

If this page opens, the web server, PHP and the database are working together. If the database cannot be reached, the heading reads Web server is running instead. The page's file is C:\Coduva\www\localhost\index.php. You can edit it; Coduva does not overwrite the page you edited. For details, see Default site.

3. Create your first project

1. Open the Projects screen from the sidebar and click New project. (Shortcut: press Ctrl+K to open the command palette and type Create new project.)
2. Select Blank PHP as the template. This template creates an empty folder containing index.php.
3. In the Project name field, type hello. The project's address appears below the field: hello.test.
4. Location defaults to C:\Coduva\www. You do not need to change it.
5. Leave PHP version at Default (8.4).
6. Click Create.

Project names may contain only lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, and cannot start or end with a hyphen. The names localhost, phpmyadmin, coduva and www are reserved for Coduva. For details, see Project types and rules.

4. Approve the administrator prompt

A new address needs a line added to Windows' hosts file. That file requires administrator permission, so Windows shows a User Account Control (UAC) window. Click Yes.

Coduva changes only its own marked section of the hosts file, and writes only lines in the form 127.0.0.1 <name>.test. It does not touch the rest of the file.

If you decline the prompt

The project is still added, but its address will not open in the browser. You can retry at any time with the Sync hosts file button on the Local domains screen.

5. Open the project

When setup finishes, the window shows the message "hello.test is ready" and an Open site button. Click it; http://hello.test/ opens in your browser. The project now appears as a card on the Projects screen.

Now edit C:\Coduva\www\hello\index.php and refresh the page. Your change appears immediately; you do not need to restart the services.

Click the project card to open its details. The buttons at the top are also in the card's ⋯ menu:

Button	What it does
Open site	Opens the project in the browser
Folder	Opens the project folder in File Explorer
Editor	Opens the project in CodVS. If CodVS is not installed, Visual Studio Code is used; if that is missing too, File Explorer is used
Terminal	Opens a command window with the correct PHP, Composer and Node versions

The card menu also contains Copy address and Details.

If port 80 is unavailable

If you have moved the web server to another port (for example 8080) in Settings → Network, the project address includes the port: http://hello.test:8080/. Coduva builds this address itself.

6. When you close the window

Closing the window does not quit Coduva. Coduva and the running services keep working in the background. You reach Coduva from its system tray icon:

• Left-click: services menu — localhost, phpMyAdmin, projects, start, stop and restart for Nginx, PHP and MariaDB, configuration files and logs.
• Right-click: app menu — settings, folders, language, tools, Stop services and quit, and Quit.

The tray icon's color shows the status: green = all installed services are running, grey = stopped, red = port conflict or blocker. For details, see System tray. For the window layout, status bar and command palette, see Screens.

Next step: create a WordPress site or a Laravel application.