The Ionic framework uses the Ionic CLI as its preferred way of creating Ionic applications. This provides a lot of different tools for creating great Ionic applications. Use the following command to install the Ionic CLI globally:

> npm install -g ionic

The Ionic CLI provides the three most common starters: blank, menu, and side menu. We will be using the sidebar starter for this project as it provides a side menu navigation for us. 

Use the ionic start command and name our application apartment-auditing. Then, choose sidemenu as our starter template, like so:

> ionic start apartment-auditing sidemenu
? Install the free Ionic Appflow SDK and connect your app? No

Now, enter a name for the folder, apartment-auditing, and serve the application using the following command, which will open the application in your browser using Ionic Lab:

> cd apartment-auditing
> ionic serve --lab
? Install @ionic/lab? Yes

This will open Ionic Lab in your browser after the build is complete:

The Ionic framework provides an application called Ionic DevApp, which is available on both iOS and Android. When your phone and the system where you served the Ionic app are on the same Wi-Fi, you will see it as available in the Ionic DevApp, which you can access and run the application on.

Now that we have successfully served the Ionic application, we will start customizing the theme of the Ionic application.