Yii 2 Basic Application Template is a skeleton Yii 2 application best for rapidly creating small projects.

The template contains the basic features including user login/logout and a contact page. It includes all commonly used configurations that would allow you to focus on adding new features to your application.

  assets/             contains assets definition
  commands/           contains console commands (controllers)
  config/             contains application configurations
  controllers/        contains Web controller classes
  mail/               contains view files for e-mails
  models/             contains model classes
  runtime/            contains files generated during runtime
  tests/              contains various tests for the basic application
  vendor/             contains dependent 3rd-party packages
  views/              contains view files for the Web application
  web/                contains the entry script and Web resources

The minimum requirement by this application template that your Web server supports PHP 5.4.0.

Extract the archive file downloaded from yiiframework.com to a directory named basic that is directly under the Web root.

You can then access the application through the following URL:

http://localhost/basic/web/

If you do not have Composer, you may install it by following the instructions at getcomposer.org.

You can then install this application template using the following command:

php composer.phar global require "fxp/composer-asset-plugin:1.0.0"
php composer.phar create-project --prefer-dist --stability=dev yiisoft/yii2-app-basic basic

Now you should be able to access the application through the following URL, assuming basic is the directory directly under the Web root.

http://localhost/basic/web/

Edit the file config/db.php with real data, for example:

return [
    'class' => 'yii\db\Connection',
    'dsn' => 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=yii2basic',
    'username' => 'root',
    'password' => '1234',
    'charset' => 'utf8',
];

NOTE: Yii won't create the database for you, this has to be done manually before you can access it.

Also check and edit the other files in the config/ directory to customize your application.