This page is a guide for getting your Magnolia environment set up for training.

Make sure to complete all the steps:

  • Install Java
  • Install Node.js
  • Install Magnolia CLI
  • Install and run Magnolia
  • Download training course modules and files
  • Extra step for Headless training course attendees

Install Java

You need a Java Development Kit (JDK) or a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on your system to run Magnolia and the Tomcat application server that ships with the bundle.

Supported Java versions:


Java 11 (LTS)

Java 8 (LTS)

Magnolia 6.2(tick)(tick)


To install correct version please follow the instructions provided on the Oracle Java website.

Verify installed Java by running following command in your command line tool:

java --version

Install Node.js

You need Node.js on your system to run Magnolia CLI, tool to set up and facilitate light development with Magnolia.
To install latest version please follow the instructions provided on the Node.js website.

Verify installed Node.js by running following commands in your command line tool:

node -v
npm -v

Known issues

With Node 17 and Magnolia CE 6.2.17 (magnolia-community-demo-webapp) Magnolia CLI installs instance scripts with read only rights. This prevents users from starting Magnolia instance locally.
As current workaround use older Node versions e.g. 16 or 14.

For more info about this problem look at this ticket:
NPMCLI-266 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Install Magnolia CLI

Magnolia CLI is an npm package providing a command line interface (CLI) tool to set up and facilitate light development with Magnolia.

To install latest version please run following command in your command line tool:

npm install @magnolia/cli -g

Verify installed Magnolia CLI by running following command in your command line tool:

mgnl --version

Install and run Magnolia

  1. Create a folder for Magnolia.

  2. Inside the Magnolia folder, run the following command in your command line tool:

    mgnl jumpstart

    This command downloads and sets up a Magnolia instance for development.

  3. When asked What Magnolia would you like to install, choose magnolia-community-demo-webapp.
  4. After Magnolia has been successfully setup you should have following folders inside the Magnolia folder:
    1. apache-tomcat
    2. light-modules

    3. downloads

      The apache-tomcat folder is where Magnolia and Tomcat web server are installed.

      The light-modules folder on the other hand is where the modules, template definitions, template scripts, etc. will reside.

  5. Inside the Magnolia folder, run following command in your command line tool:

    mgnl start

    This command starts Magnolia instance. To stop it, use CTRL+C.
    Double check that you no longer have any Java process running. In some cases CTRL+C close magnolia but does not kill the Java process.

  6. In your browser go to: http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor.
    You should see:

    Windows known issues

    To see the actual error, do not use Magnolia CLI to start Magnolia. Instead, start Tomcat directly using:
    <your-magnolia-install-folder>\apache tomcat\bin\catalina.bat run

    For more problems please look here:
    https://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/display/DOCS62/Known+issues#Knownissues-Windows

    Log in as:

    • username: superuser
    • password: superuser

Download training course additional files

Download the additional files needed for the training here.

Extra step for the Headless training course

Make sure that you are comfortable performing various API calls.

Provided examples will be using JavaScript Fetch API executed inside console of the browser.
If you prefer UI friendly environment you might want to install a third party API tool such as Postman.

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