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Visual walkthrough: getting started

This guide walks through a Didacta installation from scratch, exactly as any new self-hoster would see it: the release image is built, docker-compose.alpha.yml is brought up with no pre-existing data, and the real path of an operator is completed — setup wizard, branding, first course, enrolling students and a certificate — with an annotated screenshot at every step.

Where these screenshots come from

They were taken against an isolated, ephemeral instance with no seeds, started from a published release tag. The organization, course and people names are examples (Academia Demo, Admin Demo, Alumna Demo) — replace them with your own.

1 · First start and setup wizard

The first time you connect, Didacta redirects every route to /setup. The welcome screen summarises what you are about to configure in under a minute.

Setup wizard welcome screen

The second step asks for the organization name and the public domain (the host you are connecting from, editable).

Organization step: name and public domain

After choosing the active modules (core ones come pre-selected), the wizard asks for the first administrator's details — an account with the super_admin role.

Administrator account step: name, email and password

When it finishes, the organization and the administrator already exist and the session is active: there is no need to sign in again.

Final wizard screen: platform created

→ Full detail of what the wizard creates in Setup wizard.

2 · Complete your profile

The first time any account signs in (including the administrator's), Didacta asks for a minimal profile — a mandatory photo, name, language and notification preferences — before letting you into the rest of the platform.

Onboarding: uploading a profile photo

3 · Sign in

The sign-in screen (/signin) already carries the tenant's branding: name, real figures (active students, published courses) and the copy you configure under Administration → Branding.

Sign-in screen with the tenant's branding

4 · Customise your branding

Under Administration → Branding (/admin/branding) you upload the logo and pick the brand color (brandHue). Both are applied instantly to the sign-in screen and the public catalog.

Admin → Branding: logo uploaded and color chosen, before saving

5 · Create your first course

From Instructor → Courses → New course you set the title, description and category. The slug (public URL) is generated from the title. The course starts as a draft.

Creating a new course, in draft

Inside the course you add sections and, within each section, lessons — here, a text lesson.

Course builder: adding a text lesson

Publishing requires four things (title, description, at least one section and one lesson); the panel tells you what is missing at all times.

Publishing checklist complete

Once everything is in place, the course moves to Published.

Course published

6 · Invite your students

Without public self-enrollment, the normal way for someone to get into a course is an invitation code, generated from the course itself.

Invitation code generated for the course

The public catalog (/catalogo) is the sales catalog

/catalogo is the public listing for courses with a price (mod.billing) — designed for a visitor who pays by card without signing up first. A published course with no price configured, like the one in this walkthrough, does not appear there: it is still perfectly reachable by invitation or through the internal catalog once students are signed in. See Three ways to fill your academy.

Empty public sales catalog: this course has no price configured

To add someone directly, Administration → Users & roles → Invite person creates the account already active and sends them an email to set their password.

Adding a student through an individual invitation

7 · The student signs in and enrolls

From the link in the email, the student sets her password.

The student sets her password from the email link

Once signed in, /cursos is the app's internal catalog: it lists every published course in the organization, priced or not (unlike the /catalogo sales listing from the previous step).

Internal catalog at /cursos, signed in

On the course page, she redeems the invitation code the organization gave her.

Redeeming the invitation code on the course page

Redeeming it enrolls her instantly and shows her progress dashboard.

Student enrolled: progress dashboard

8 · Complete the lesson and download the certificate

The lesson player shows the content and, for types such as text or PDF, a button to mark it as completed manually.

Text lesson content

Once the course completion threshold is reached, Didacta issues the certificate automatically and the hero button changes to "Download certificate".

Course completed: certificate ready to download

All of a student's certificates are also kept at /mis-certificados, with a verifiable sequential number.

/mis-certificados with the issued certificate

9 · A look at Administration → License

Community works in full without a license. Administration → License (/admin/licencia) shows the current status and lets you activate an Enterprise license by pasting the key — verification is local, with no calls to an external server. If the operator pinned DIDACTA_LICENSE_KEY through the environment, the screen becomes read-only; see License.

Admin → License: Community status, no active Enterprise license

What these screenshots do not show

  • The own-enrollments endpoint (GET /me/enrollments) can take up to ~1 second to reflect a freshly created enrollment. If you have just redeemed a code and do not see the course immediately in some listing, reload.

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