CakePHP warning and Notice after installation

Question

After installing CakePHP successfully, on first time running, I'm getting these warnings at the bottom. How can I fix this.

Warning (2): Missing argument 1 for View::element(), called in /Users/michaelanywar/Sites/cakephp/app/View/Layouts/default.ctp on line 61 and defined [CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 398]

Notice (8): Undefined variable: name [CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 416]

Notice (8): Undefined variable: name [CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 422]

Notice (1024): Element Not Found: Elements/.ctp [CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 425]

My View/view.php lines from 398 to 427 look like this:

    public function element($name, $data = array(), $options = array()) {
    $file = $plugin = null;

    if (isset($options['plugin'])) {
        $name = Inflector::camelize($options['plugin']) . '.' . $name;
    }

    if (!isset($options['callbacks'])) {
        $options['callbacks'] = false;
    }

    if (isset($options['cache'])) {
        $contents = $this->_elementCache($name, $data, $options);
        if ($contents !== false) {
            return $contents;
        }
    }

    $file = $this->_getElementFilename($name);
    if ($file) {
        return $this->_renderElement($file, $data, $options);
    }

    if (empty($options['ignoreMissing'])) {
    list ($plugin, $name) = pluginSplit($name, true);
        $name = str_replace('/', DS, $name);
        $file = $plugin . 'Elements' . DS . $name . $this->ext;
        trigger_error(__d('cake_dev', 'Element Not Found: %s', $file), E_USER_NOTICE);
    }
}

Answer 1

If you look at your first warning/error message it should be clear what the issue is: "Warning (2): Missing argument 1 for View::element()".

Look on line 61 of your default layout View template (/app/View/Layouts/default.ctp). You obviously have a call to $this->element() that isn't passing a template name (hence Cake is looking for "Elements/.ctp").

Make sure you pass a template name to the element() method or remove it from your template. For example, if you want to include the template "View/Elements/site_header.ctp":-

echo $this->element('site_header');

The template just needs to exist in the 'View/Elements' folder. You don't need to pass the '.ctp' extension to the element() method, Cake assumes this.

Make sure you've read the docs on Elements.