This is the procedure I use for creating new projects with yiiframework: Download latest code from http://www.yiiframework.com cd ~/tmp wget http://yii.googlecode.com/files/yii-1.1.5.r2654.tar.gz tar xzvf yii-1.1.5.r2654.tar.gz Create a new directory for the project: mkdir ~/workspace/www/myproject cp -R ~/tmp/yii-1.1.5.r2654/framework/ ~/workspace/www/myproject Create an initial application skeleton: cd ~/workspace/www/myproject framework/yiic webapp public Move application directory outside from webroot (for security [...]