Overview

The HumHub platform

HumHub provides a powerful modular platform based on the Yii2 Framework. The modular nature of HumHub allows developers to add new features or change the behavior of existing core features by means of custom modules.

Languages used throughout the platform are:

• PHP
• JavaScript
• SQL (MySQL/MariaDB)
• HTML
• CSS/Less

HumHub is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and uses frontend frameworks such as:

• jQuery
• Bootstrap 3
• Less
• Fontawesome.

In this guide you will find all the necessary information in order to customize your HumHub installation and implement your own modules. Since HumHub is based on the Yii 2.0 PHP Framework make sure you're also familiar with the basic concepts of Yii2:

• The Definitive Guide to Yii 2.0

Core modules and components

The HumHub core consists of a set of core modules, components, widgets, helpers and views, which can be used within your custom modules and are described in more detail within the Module Development section.

HumHub extends several Yii components such as:

• humhub\components\ActiveRecord
• humhub\components\Application
• humhub\components\AssetManager
• humhub\components\Controller
• humhub\components\Event
• humhub\components\ActiveRecord
• humhub\components\Migration
• humhub\components\Module
• humhub\components\Request
• humhub\components\Response
• humhub\components\Theme
• humhub\components\UrlManager
• humhub\components\View
• humhub\components\Widget
• and more...

and consists of the following core modules:

Module	Description
activity	Social network activities
admin	Administration backend
comment	Content add-on for commenting
content	Base module for all content types (Post,Wiki,...)
dashboard	HumHub Dashboard overview
directory	HumHub Directory platform overview (User/Spaces/Groups)
file	Base file module for managing uploaded files
friendship	Enables user friendship relations
installer	HumHub platform installer
like	Content add-on for likes
live	Enables live updates in the frontend
marketplace	Marketplace interface
notification	Enables notification over different targets
post	Simple post content type
queue	Queue module for asynchronous jobs
search	HumHub search abstraction + default implementation
space	User Spaces
stream	Content Streams
topic	Content topics used to categorize content entries
tour	Introduction tour (user-guide)
ui	Base user interface components like widgets and theme logic
user	HumHub user and authentication
web	Web standard related classes

Application structure

The following structure lists the main directories of a HumHub installation, whereas the humhub directory will be referred as web-root throughout this guide.

humhub
├── assets
├── protected
│   ├── config
│   ├── humhub
│   ├── modules
│   ├── runtime
│   └── vendor
├── static
├── themes
└── uploads

• assets - Contains published assets as scripts and stylesheets managed by AssetBundles.
• protected - Contains files as core and module sources and configuration files. The access to this directory needs to be protected in an production environment.
  • config - Contains user configuration files.
  • humhub - Contains all HumHub core files'
  • modules - This is the default directory used for searching for external modules.
  • runtime - Contains runtime related files as cache, search index and logs
  • vendor - Contains third party libraries
• static - Static asset files as production assets, core javascript/less files etc.
• uploads - File uploads, profile images etc.

info

See Yii2 - Application Structure for an in depth description of a Yii2 application.