In creating my first Yii application, there were a few hurdles and stumbling blocks along the way. One of the first guides/tutorials that a new user to the Yii PHP framework is directed to is the "Creating Your First Yii Application" in the "Definitive Guide to Yii" . This is kind of a companion piece that has extra explanation, plus the first steps I made to start turning the example app (generated skeleton) into my custom web application.