Here are two parts - one about how it works and another about how to run it. Consult them in any order according to your needs.

Currently repo contains bare minimum files, or "framework" which work for page loading. This provides several features:

• every page may contain two parts - page view or template itself, e.g. mainly HTML code - and "controller" which mainly contains PHP code to prepare or load necessary data for given page
• every page may specify "layout" into which it is inserted, so that many pages share common "frame" (currently there is a single "default" layout)
• pages and layouts also can insert "fragments" either to reuse them in more than one place - or simply to put less important things elsewhere

The main file which processes all requests is index.php and it contains the "heart" of framework. Here you may find brief code which tries to load "controllers" and "pages" upon request. For example if you try to load page by url http://localhost:8080/index.php?page=task_list then it will look firstly for file ctl/task/List.php for "controller" code, which may inject some data into $model object - then for file pages/task/list.php which will have HTML code with inclusions of data from $model here and there.

Controller may be absent if it is not needed by some simple page. Page template also could be absent if controller uses plain output (look at ctl/api/Weekbest.php). You can guess that underscores in page parameter in the url correspond to nested directories below ctl and pages. Note that controller file names are capitalized to reduce confusion when opened in a multi-page editor. There is a folder module which prepares "context" object which provides access to various helper "service" classes etc. These are available in pages and controllers code via $ctx variable.

When no page is specified with the request (i.e. we load index.php without parameters), then main page is loaded.

There is some magic which allows to use urls like index/task_list instead of index.php?page=task_list - this is achieved by url-rewriting set up in the optional .htaccessfile and configuration option in theconf.php` - but let's return to it later.

Excercises

You see that "Problems" link for example leads to non-existing page (as other links too). Try adding such a page with some example content. Just to make sure you understand where to put files etc.

Check the ctl/pages/Main.php controller. There are some empty variables defined which are used to display dynamic lists on the main page (last problems, last forum topics). Try to put here some static data (arrays, objects) to get visible results on the main page. This will require you to check corresponding files in "fragments" folder to figure out which exactly data are needed (of course in reality they are coming from database).

This is a typical PHP + MySQL application, so you need an http-server with PHP interpreter and MySQL (MariaDB).

There are THREE ways to launch this zoo relatively easily.

Docker is something resembling virtual-machine (but not exactly) widely used in industry. We describe the content of "containers" we need in a file (or few) and docker prepares everything. You'll need to install docker itself (there could be subtle steps like setting user group in linux but generally it is not much complicated) - this is available in linux, windows and OsX. Then run files docker-build.sh to build an image containing our Apache2 httpd + PHP server with MariaDB in one. then docker-run.sh to launch container from it. If all is fine, the site should be ready at http://localhost:8080/

Pick some free hosting, for example AwardSpace / AtWebpages and simply copy files there. You'll need setup database here also and put its details into configuration, but at the first step this is not important.

Then you'll get the site running on the web. There could be some limitations about some auxiliary functions (e.g. 3rd party login etc) but that's not much important for you now (such things anyway require efforts to setup).

With this approach you'll find software package (by the name XAMPP probably) which contains HTTP server, PHP and MySQL inside and set up on your machine. It is not very difficult also and in some respects more handy than with docker. Then copy files there and setup database.