Installation

To start using this dashboard you will need to import some files in your current project or start from scratch using our template (scroll down in this page to view it).

Prerequisites

If you don't already have an Apache local environment with PHP and MySQL, use one of the following links:

Also, you will need to install Composer: https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md

And Laravel: https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/installation

Installation

  1. Unzip the downloaded archive
  2. Copy and paste material-dashboard-2-Laravel-free folder in your projects folder. Rename the folder to your project's name
  3. In your terminal run composer install
  4. Copy .env.example to .env and updated the configurations (mainly the database configuration)
  5. In your terminal run php artisan key:generate
  6. Run php artisan migrate --seed to create the database tables and seed the roles and users tables
  7. Run php artisan storage:link to create the storage symlink (if you are using Vagrant with Homestead for development, remember to ssh into your virtual machine and run the command from there).

Usage

Register an user or login with data from your database and start testing (make sure to run the migrations and seeders for the credentials to be available).

Besides the dashboard, the auth pages, the billing and tables pages, it has also an edit profile page. All the necessary files are installed out of the box and all the needed routes are added to routes/web.php. Keep in mind that all of the features can be viewed once you login using the credentials provided or by registering your own user.

Tooling setup

Bootstrap CDN

Skip the download with BootstrapCDN to deliver cached version of Bootstrap’s compiled CSS and JS to your project.

<!-- CSS only -->
<link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-wEmeIV1mKuiNpC+IOBjI7aAzPcEZeedi5yW5f2yOq55WWLwNGmvvx4Um1vskeMj0" crossorigin="anonymous">
<!-- JavaScript Bundle with Popper -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-p34f1UUtsS3wqzfto5wAAmdvj+osOnFyQFpp4Ua3gs/ZVWx6oOypYoCJhGGScy+8" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

CSS

Copy-paste the stylesheet <link> into your <head> before all other stylesheets to load our CSS.

<!-- Fonts -->
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300,400,600,700" rel="stylesheet">

<!-- Icons -->
<link href="../assets/css/nucleo-icons.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<link href="../assets/css/nucleo-svg.css" rel="stylesheet" />

<!-- Font Awesome Icons -->
<script src="https://kit.fontawesome.com/42d5adcbca.js" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

<!-- CSS Files -->
<link id="pagestyle" href="../assets/css/material-dashboard.css" rel="stylesheet" />

JS

Many of our components require the use of JavaScript to function. Specifically , Popper.js, and our own JavaScript plugins. Place the following <script>s near the end of your pages, right before the closing </body> tag, to enable them. Popper.js must come and then our JavaScript plugins.

<!-- Core -->
<script src="../assets/js/core/popper.min.js"></script>
<script src="../assets/js/core/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

<!-- Theme JS -->
<script src="../assets/js/material-dashboard.min.js"></script>

Need to use a certain plugin in your page? You can find out how to integrate them and make them work in the Plugins dedicated page. In this way you will be sure that your website is optimized and uses only the needed resources.

Dark mode

Material Dashboard PRO comes in 2 modes: dark & light. To turn on the dark version you need to add dark-version class on the body tag. 

<!-- Dark version -->
<body class="dark-version">
...
</body>

Bootstrap starter template

Be sure to have your pages set up with the latest design and development standards. That means using an HTML5 doctype and including a viewport meta tag for proper responsive behaviors. Put it all together and your pages should look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="76x76" href="../assets/img/apple-icon.png">
  <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="../assets/img/favicon.png">
  <title>
    Material Dashboard by Creative Tim
  </title>
  <!--     Fonts and icons     -->
  <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300,400,600,700" rel="stylesheet" />
  <!-- Nucleo Icons -->
  <link href="../assets/css/nucleo-icons.css" rel="stylesheet" />
  <link href="../assets/css/nucleo-svg.css" rel="stylesheet" />
  <!-- Font Awesome Icons -->
  <script src="https://kit.fontawesome.com/42d5adcbca.js" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
  <link href="../assets/css/nucleo-svg.css" rel="stylesheet" />
  <!-- CSS Files -->
  <link id="pagestyle" href="../assets/css/material-dashboard.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>

<body class="g-sidenav-show bg-gray-100">

  <h1>Hello, world!</h1>

  <!--   Core JS Files   -->
  <script src="../assets/js/core/popper.min.js"></script>
  <script src="../assets/js/core/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

  <!-- Plugin for the charts, full documentation here: https://www.chartjs.org/ -->
  <script src="../assets/js/plugins/chartjs.min.js"></script>
  <script src="../assets/js/plugins/Chart.extension.js"></script>

  <!-- Control Center for Material Dashboard: parallax effects, scripts for the example pages etc -->
  <script src="../assets/js/material-dashboard.min.js"></script>
</body>

</html>

Important globals

Material Dashboard employs a handful of important global styles and settings that you’ll need to be aware of when using it, all of which are almost exclusively geared towards the normalization of cross browser styles. Let’s dive in.

HTML5 doctype

Bootstrap requires the use of the HTML5 doctype. Without it, you’ll see some funky incomplete styling, but including it shouldn’t cause any considerable hiccups.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  ...
</html>

Responsive meta tag

Bootstrap is developed mobile first, a strategy in which we optimize code for mobile devices first and then scale up components as necessary using CSS media queries. To ensure proper rendering and touch zooming for all devices, add the responsive viewport meta tag to your <head>.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">

You can see an example of this in action in the starter template.

Bootstrap components

Many of Bootstrap’s components and utilities are built with @each loops that iterate over a Sass map. This is especially helpful for generating variants of a component by our $theme-colors and creating responsive variants for each breakpoint. As you customize these Sass maps and recompile, you’ll automatically see your changes reflected in these loops.

Bootstrap tutorial

Please check our official Youtube channel for more tutorials.