CMS Platform

What is CMS Platform?

CMS Platform comes out-of-the-box with modules, advanced security, easy setup, and powerful developer features. Use and configure what's there, and customize what's not. The flexible Open Source license lets you move beyond the technology to focus on delivering a quality website.

New for 2026 – Build your web pages, styles, and SEO, with a comprehensive visual webpage editor.

What's improved in CMS Platform?

• It's well-maintained
• You can publish your website as a completely static website
  • Use CMS Platform's UI across your team to compose web changes including content, navigation, layout, Javascript, CSS, etc.
  • Then publish static copies (without draft content) with features like:
    • SEO naming conventions
    • Redirects
    • Caching
    • PDF downloads
    • Streaming videos
• There's a refined Enterprise SSO integration with OAuth2 endpoint discovery and user groups
• The site and deployment properties can be completely configured through environment variables

Documentation

The latest CMS Platform documentation is available at https://github.com/rajkowski/cms-platform/blob/main/docs/index.md including technical documentation and diagrams.

The CHANGELOG is at https://github.com/rajkowski/cms-platform/blob/main/docs/CHANGELOG.md.

Documentation is in MKDocs format intended for use in platforms which use MKDocs like Spotify Backstage.

Developers

Read the Developer Environment Guide to begin developing.

License

Apache License 2.0 – see LICENSE.txt. Copyright 2026 Matt Rajkowski.

See ATTRIBUTION.md for the full list of included open-source projects and their licenses.

Overview

Need a website or web portal? CMS Platform can be used from Day 1:

• Once installed the administrator signs in and can quickly create a sitemap. Working on their own, or with others, the pages of the site are added.
• Each web page can have shared elements and styles, as well as their own elements and styles.
• A designer can work on the site's global style and layout, then target page-by-page improvements, while content authors fill out the web page content.
• Content authors work with the page elements which include searchable text, images, and videos. There are many dynamic elements which can be selected, including slideshows, news feeds, calendar events, blog posts, and more.
• For more complex components, a developer can work both online and off to enable the functionality or create it.

Features

• CMS: Visual Webpage Editor, Site Map, Web Pages (Templates, UI Designer, SEO, Searchable) with Content and Images, HTML Editor, CSS Editor, Blogs, Form Data, Calendars, Folders and Files, Mailing Lists, Videos, Wikis, Search, Site Alerts, Form Pop-Ups, Sticky Header and Buttons, Responsive, Bot Detection, Static Site Generator (SSG)
• Analytics: Tracking for Sessions, Hits, Geolocation, Content, Searches, Referrals; Charts; xAPI; Pixels
• Data Integration: Datasets (CSV, TSV, JSON, GeoJSON, and RSS sources), Collections (Profiles, Geolocation, Multiple Categories, Relationships, Custom Fields, Indexed, Searchable), Data Sources
• Collaboration: Users (Register, Validation, Login, Invite), User Groups, Collection Membership and Permissions, Chat
• E-commerce: Products, SKUs, Categories, Customers, Orders, Account Management, Shipping Methods, Carriers, Tracking Numbers, Pricing Rules (Constraints, Discounts, and Promos)
• CRM: Forms, Leads & Customers, Orders
• Settings: Theme, Site SEO, Social Media, Mail Server, Maps, Captcha, Analytics, E-commerce, Mailing Lists
• Integration: Google Analytics, Map Box, Open Street Map, Square, Stripe, Taxjar, USPS, Boxzooka
• Security: OAuth, Firewall (Integration and Blocked IP lists), Spam Filter, Geo Filter, Rate Limiting, Snyk scanning
• API: Rest API
• Platform: Micro Widgets, Connection Pool, Cache, Scheduler, Workflow, Expression Engine, Upgrades, Migrations, Record Paging

Run the Published Container Images

You can use the docker-compose.yaml file in this repo to pull the latest images and run them locally: https://github.com/rajkowski/cms-platform/blob/main/docker-compose.yaml

In the same directory, create a file called .env with the following values, edit as needed:

CMS_ADMIN_USERNAME=<Your_Admin_Username_or_Email_Address>
CMS_ADMIN_PASSWORD=<Your_Admin_Password>
CMS_FORCE_SSL=false
DB_SERVER_NAME=db
DB_SSL=false
DB_NAME=cms-platform
DB_USER=postgres
DB_PASSWORD=postgres_password

Run:

docker compose up

Login: http://localhost/login

Release Process

An optimized web application archive (.war), with production settings, is released to this project's GitHub releases, ready for installation and which automatically upgrades previously installed versions. Always have a backup of your database and the file library path.

The latest CMS Platform release is at https://github.com/rajkowski/cms-platform/releases.

Release notes include a list of changes for review.

Download the .war and follow your choice of deployment options.

To log into a new site, add "/login" to the URL. Later, turn on the site login setting to reveal a login button for your website.