You'll need node 0.10.x and npm 1.3.x installed to run SydJS. The easiest way is to download the installers from nodejs.org.
You'll also need MongoDB 2.4.x - if you're on a Mac, the easiest way is to install homebrew and then run brew install mongo.
If you're on a Mac you'll also need Xcode and the Command Line Tools installed or the build process won't work.
Get a local copy of the site by cloning this repository, or fork it to work on your own copy.
Then run npm install to download the dependencies.
Before you continue, create a file called .env in the root folder of the project (this will be ignored by git). This file is used to emulate the environment config of our production server, in development. Any key=value settings you put in there (one on each line) will be set as environment variables in process.env.
The only line you need to add to your .env file is a valid CLOUDINARY_URL. To get one of these, sign up for a free account at Cloudinary and paste the environment variable if gives you into your .env file. It should look something like this:
CLOUDINARY_URL=cloudinary://12345:abcde@cloudname
Once you've set up your configuration, run node keystone to start the server.
By default, Keystone will connect to a new local MongoDB database on your localhost called sydjs, and create a new Admin user that you can use to log in with using the email address [email protected] and the password admin.
If you want to run against a different server or database, add a line to your .env file to set the MONGO_URI environment variable, and restart the site.
When it's all up and running, you should see the message SydJS is ready on port 3000 and you'll be able to browse the site on localhost:3000.
The first time you run the site, the homepage will warn you that it expects there to be at least one meetup, and your database won't have any. Don't freak out, just go to /keystone, sign in as the admin user, and create one.
You'll probably want to add some other content too (blog post, members, etc) to get all the pages looking right.
... happy hacking!