Quick start

This page shows you how to get the theme you bought running on your own computer in five minutes.

Download the zip

Download the theme as a zip from the My Account › Downloads page. The Acun UI packages (the free components and PRO) are inside the zip. You don't download packages from npm or a Composer repository. You don't enter a license key or a repository password either.

acun-admin-1.1.0/
├── full-version/     Full version: every demo page and sample data
├── starter-kit/      Starter version: layout, menu, empty dashboard and auth pages
├── LICENSE.md        License text
└── README.md         Short installation summary and docs URL

Each folder is a standalone Laravel 13 application. The files inside them are described on the Folder structure page.

Full version or starter kit?

	Full version	Starter kit
Purpose	Browsing every page, copying pieces	A clean starting point for your own project
Pages	Dashboard, users, tables, forms, component examples, auth pages, sample store	Empty dashboard, account settings, auth pages
Sample data	Yes: in JSON files, no database needed	None

Start your project with the starter kit. Copy the pages you need from the full version. The Acun UI packages in the two folders are identical, and every component is available in both.

Requirements

PHP 8.3 or later
Composer 2.2 or later
Database: not needed for the full version. For the starter kit: SQLite (the default), MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+: only when you change the design and rebuild the CSS and JavaScript. The compiled files come ready in the zip.

On macOS and Windows, Laravel Herd installs PHP, Composer and Node.js in one go. Every package and its version is listed on the Dependencies page.

Step by step

Unzip the archive and go into the folder you'll use:
```
cd acun-admin-1.1.0/starter-kit
```
Install the PHP dependencies. The Acun UI packages are linked from the packages/acun-ui folder; nothing is downloaded from the internet:
```
composer install
```
Create the environment file and generate the application key:
```
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
```
Create the database tables. The starter kit uses SQLite by default. Skip this step for the full version:
```
php artisan migrate
```
Start the application:
```
php artisan serve
```

Open it in your browser

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000. If you use Herd, add the folder to Herd; the site opens at http://folder-name.test.

In the full version, the home page shows the sample store; the admin panel is at /admin. None of these steps need Node.js, because the compiled CSS and JavaScript ship in the zip.

Changing the design

When you change the colors, the Tailwind classes or the files under resources/js, rebuild the CSS and JavaScript:

npm install      # first time only: installs the build tools
npm run build    # builds into the public/build folder

While developing, npm run dev shows changes instantly. See CSS, JavaScript and build for details.

Full version sample data

The orders and users in the full version live in resources/data/orders.json and resources/data/users.json. The sample store's products and categories are in the same folder, in products.json and categories.json. There is no database to set up and no migration or seed step.

The first time a page touches the data, the tables are created in memory and the JSON rows are loaded. Pages that don't touch the data load nothing.
Changes made on a page (e.g. shipping an order) are visible only within that request. When you reload the page, the data goes back to what's in the file.
Dates are shifted to the current day when they're loaded. That's why summaries such as "last 30 days" are always populated.
To regenerate the orders and users, run php artisan demo:data.

The table structure is in app/Support/JsonDatabase.php. In your own project, write the same structure as migrations. DataTable and list pages work the same way with a real database.

Permissions

On a Linux or macOS server, Laravel needs to be able to write to the storage and bootstrap/cache folders:

chmod -R ug+rw storage bootstrap/cache

Using MySQL or PostgreSQL

Change the database settings in the .env file:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=database_name
DB_USERNAME=username
DB_PASSWORD=password

Then create the tables:

php artisan migrate

Warning
php artisan migrate:fresh drops every table and recreates them from scratch. Don't run it against a production database.

Updates

When a new version is released, download the new zip from the My Account › Downloads page. In your own project, replace only the Acun UI packages:

Replace the packages/acun-ui folder in your project with starter-kit/packages/acun-ui from the new zip.
Refresh the dependencies and the compiled files:
```
composer update "acunsoft/*"
npm run build
```

Your own files under app/, resources/ and routes/ are not affected. If you copied a component's view into your application, that copy doesn't receive the update (see Optional publishing). Read about what changed in the release notes on the product page.

Next step

Add your own page to the panel: Your first page. Related pages:

Adding to an existing project: add Acun UI to an existing Laravel project without the theme.
Configuration: the config/acun-ui.php settings.
Deployment: moving the application to a server.