basic application usage guide

docs/guide/apps-basic.md

 Basic application template
 ==========================
 
+This template is a perfect fit for small projects or learning Yii2.
+
 The application has four pages: the homepage, the about page, the contact page and the login page.
 The contact page displays a contact form that users can fill in to submit their inquiries to the webmaster,
-and the login page allows users to be authenticated before accessing privileged contents.
+and the login page allows users to be authenticated before accessing privileged contents.
\ No newline at end of file
+
+Directory structure
+-------------------
+
+The basic application does not divide application directories much. Here's the basic structure:
+
+- `commands` - console controllers.
+- `config` - configuration.
+- `controllers` - web controllers.
+- `models` - application models.
+- `runtime` - logs, states, file cache.
+- `views` - view templates.
+- `web` - webroot.
+
+Root directory contains a set of files.
+
+- `.gitignore` contains a list of directories ignored by git version system. If you need something never get to your source
+code repository, add it there.
+- `codeception.yml` - Codeception config.
+- `composer.json` - Composer config described in detail below.
+- `LICENSE.md` - license info. Put your project license there. Especially when opensourcing.
+- `README.md` - basic info about installing template. Consider replacing it with information about your project and its
+  installation.
+- `requirements.php` - Yii requirements checker. Don't forget to delete it when deployed to the server.
+- `yii` - console application bootstrap.
+- `yii.bat` - console application bootstrap for Windows.
+
+
+### config
+
+This directory contains configuration files:
+
+- `AppAsset.php` - definition of application assets such as CSS, JavaScript etc. Check [Managing assets](assets.md) for
+  details.
+- `console.php` - console application configuration.
+- `params.php` - common application parameters.
+- `web.php` - web application configuration.
+- `web-test.php` - web application configuration used when running functional tests.
+
+All these files except `AppAsset.php` are returning arrays used to configure corresponding application properties. Check
+[Configuration](configuration.md) guide section for details.
+
+### views
+
+Views directory contains templates your application is using. In the basic template there are:
+
+```
+layouts
+	main.php
+site
+	about.php
+	contact.php
+	error.php
+	index.php
+	login.php
+```
+
+`layouts` contains HTML layouts i.e. page markup except content: doctype, head section, main menu, footer etc.
+The rest are typically controller views. By convention these are located in subdirectories matching controller id. For
+`SiteController` views are under `site`. Names of the views themselves are typically match controller action names.
+Partials are often named starting with underscore.
+
+### web
+
+Directory is a webroot. Typically a webserver is pointed into it.
+
+```
+assets
+css
+index.php
+index-test.php
+```
+
+`assets` contains published asset files such as CSS, JavaScript etc. Publishing process is automatic so you don't need
+to do anything with this directory other than making sure Yii has enough permissions to write to it.
+
+`css` contains plain CSS files and is useful for global CSS that isn't going to be compressed or merged by assets manager.
+
+`index.php` is the main web application bootstrap and is the central entry point for it. `index-test.php` is the entry
+point for functional testing.
+
+Configuring Composer
+--------------------
+
+After application template is installed it's a good idea to adjust defaul `composer.json` that can be found in the root
+directory:
+
+```javascript
+{
+	"name": "yiisoft/yii2-app-basic",
+	"description": "Yii 2 Basic Application Template",
+	"keywords": ["yii", "framework", "basic", "application template"],
+	"homepage": "http://www.yiiframework.com/",
+	"type": "project",
+	"license": "BSD-3-Clause",
+	"support": {
+		"issues": "https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2/issues?state=open",
+		"forum": "http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/",
+		"wiki": "http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/",
+		"irc": "irc://irc.freenode.net/yii",
+		"source": "https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2"
+	},
+	"minimum-stability": "dev",
+	"require": {
+		"php": ">=5.3.0",
+		"yiisoft/yii2": "dev-master",
+		"yiisoft/yii2-composer": "dev-master"
+	},
+	"scripts": {
+		"post-create-project-cmd": [
+			"yii\\composer\\InstallHandler::setPermissions"
+		]
+	},
+	"extra": {
+		"yii-install-writable": [
+			"runtime",
+			"web/assets"
+		],
+		"yii-install-executable": [
+			"yii"
+		]
+	}
+}
+```
+
+First we're updating basic information. Change `name`, `description`, `keywords`, `homepage` and `support` to match
+your project.
+
+Now the interesting part. You can add more packages your application needs to `require` section.
+For example, to use markdown helper you need to add `michelf/php-markdown`. All these packages are coming from
+[packagist.org](https://packagist.org/) so feel free to browse the website for useful code.
+
+After your `composer.json` is changed you can run `php composer.phar update`, wait till packages are downloaded and
+installed and then just use them. Autoloading of classes will be handled automatically.
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docs/guide/index.md

@@ -75,5 +75,6 @@ More
 - [Theming](theming.md)
 - [Console Application](console.md)
 - [Performance Tuning](performance.md)
+- [Managing assets](assets.md)
 - [Testing](testing.md)
 - [Upgrading from 1.1 to 2.0](upgrade-from-v1.md)