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I enjoy InvoiceShelf since I migrated to it in December 2024. InvoiceShelf is open-source invoicing software. I do not allow it to send emails, but I’m exploring the idea.

How to prevent local web apps from sending emails

I run MailHog. It’s an open-source email catcher that allows me to see what emails sites running on my computer have tried to send.

Configure InvoiceShelf to use MailHog

Go to Settings > Mail Configuration.

• Mail Driver: smtp
• Mail Host: 127.0.0.1
• Mail Port: 1025
• Mail Encryption: none

Screenshot

Here’s a screenshot of my Mail Configuration page.

1. Create a directory for the site & install Drupal files

   All my sites live in ~/sites, so I navigated there in macOS Terminal and ran these commands. I want my Drupal site in a folder named p8hd and my local website to live at https://p8hd.test.

   composer create-project drupal/recommended-project:10.4.1 p8hdcd p8hd
   valet link
   valet secure
   

   This creates a directory at “~/sites/p8hd”, populates it with composer.json and composer.lock files, installs the composer dependencies, creates a symbolic link, and creates a TLS certificate. A website is now live at the URL https://p8hd.test.

   I chose 10.4.1 because I am running PHP 8.2.26 and that’s the latest compatible version of Drupal.

2. Create a database

   I copied these commands from the Drupal installation guide.

   mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE DATABASE p8hd CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci";
   mysql -u root -p

   Enter the database password twice, and paste this query at the mysql prompt:

   GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON p8hd.* TO 'root'@'localhost';

3. Visit the site and run the installer

   https://p8hd.test redirects to https://p8hd.test/core/install.php and that’s a good thing.

Screenshot

Here is a screenshot of https://p8hd.test after running the installer: