Self-Hosted Flat-File CMS

Grav is a flat-file content management system that eliminates the need for a traditional database by storing site content and configuration in human-readable Markdown and YAML files. Built as a modular PHP web framework, it uses a hierarchical page routing system where the physical directory structure directly determines the site's URL paths. The platform is distinguished by its event-driven plugin architecture and a command-line interface that prioritizes system administration, deployment, and maintenance tasks. It utilizes a blueprint-driven system to generate administrative forms from structured data schemas, allowing for complex content management without requiring custom code. A secure, sandboxed templating engine handles the rendering of content into HTML, supporting template inheritance and custom filters. The system provides a comprehensive suite of capabilities, including advanced media processing, multi-language support, and granular access control. It features robust automation tools for scheduling background tasks, managing site backups, and synchronizing content via version control. Developers can extend the core functionality through a modular plugin system, which allows for deep integration with external services and custom logic injection throughout the application lifecycle. The project is designed for flexible deployment, supporting containerized environments and standard web server configurations. It includes extensive documentation and CLI tools to facilitate local development, package management, and automated system updates.

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform and headless content management system designed for professional publishers. It provides a decoupled architecture that separates the content management backend from the front-end delivery layer, allowing users to manage editorial workflows and site data through structured web services. The platform distinguishes itself by integrating a built-in membership and subscription engine, which enables creators to manage gated content, paid tiers, and secure member profiles directly within the system. It also features a dedicated infrastructure for professional newsletter publishing, supporting automated email distribution and subscriber engagement. Developers can interact with the platform through a comprehensive RESTful API or a dedicated JavaScript client library, while the system's headless nature allows for the delivery of content to any custom front-end application. Beyond its core publishing capabilities, the platform includes a templated theme engine for server-side rendering and supports extensive customization through modular configuration adapters. These allow for flexible storage backends, event-driven webhooks for external integrations, and granular control over site settings and security. The project provides extensive documentation for its administrative and content delivery APIs, alongside command-line tools for managing site configuration, theme validation, and environment settings.

This project is an enterprise knowledge platform designed for teams to create, manage, and publish structured documentation. Built on a high-performance runtime, it provides a centralized environment where contributors can author content using markdown, HTML, or a visual editor. The system is engineered to handle collaborative workflows, ensuring that technical and non-technical users alike can maintain documentation with consistent rendering and version control. What distinguishes this platform is its focus on secure, scalable, and synchronized content management. It features granular path-based access controls and pluggable authentication middleware that integrates with enterprise identity providers, social logins, and multi-factor security layers. To ensure data persistence and collaborative safety, the platform supports direct synchronization with version control repositories and automated backups to cloud object storage. The system offers a comprehensive suite of tools for managing organizational knowledge, including multilingual localization, media asset management, and detailed content version history. Administrators can further tailor the platform through custom visual themes, site-wide style injections, and flexible search configurations that support both built-in engines and external indexing services. The architecture is designed to scale across diverse infrastructure, from low-power hardware to high-performance cloud environments.

Milkdown is a plugin-driven framework for building rich text editors that render and edit Markdown content in real time. It serves as an extensible rich text framework and a visual editor for Markdown documents, eliminating the need for a separate preview pane. The system is designed as a modular toolkit for creating customizable text editing experiences. It allows for the development of specialized editors with unique formatting rules and behaviors through a plugin-based extension model. The framework covers capabilities for markdown content management and the creation of visual editing interfaces. It enables the integration of custom plugins to add new formatting rules and functional capabilities to the text editing environment.

Strapi is an open-source headless content management system and JavaScript framework used for defining content schemas and managing structured data. It functions as a REST and GraphQL API gateway that decouples backend data storage from frontend delivery. The system includes a self-hosted administration interface for managing content entries and defining data models without manual database queries. The framework utilizes a plugin-based extension system to inject custom logic into the application lifecycle. It employs schema-driven content modeling to automatically generate database tables and API endpoints based on configuration files. The platform covers content management, API delivery, and custom backend development. It provides tools for local development orchestration using containers to ensure consistent environments for testing and deployment.

Zettlr is an academic markdown editor and research note management tool designed for professional writing and knowledge organization. It functions as a document processor that enables users to draft, structure, and manage research projects within a unified workspace. The application distinguishes itself by integrating a Zettelkasten-based knowledge management system, allowing users to link related research concepts and notes to foster discovery. It utilizes a local-file-system persistence model, ensuring that all data remains under user control and portable across different environments. The platform supports complex academic workflows by incorporating structured metadata and a modular conversion pipeline. This allows for the transformation of markdown files into various standardized publication formats, facilitating the preparation of documents for academic submission and professional publishing. The software is distributed as a cross-platform desktop application, providing a native interface for managing large collections of literature notes and source materials.

StackEdit is a browser-based Markdown editor designed for structured document authoring and collaborative content creation. It functions as an offline-first web application, allowing users to maintain full access to their documents and editing tools without an active internet connection, with changes automatically synchronized once connectivity is restored. The platform distinguishes itself through its support for real-time multi-user collaboration, utilizing operational transformation to merge concurrent edits from multiple participants. It features a modular architecture that supports specialized content rendering, including mathematical expressions, diagrams, and musical scores, alongside a plugin-based system for extending Markdown syntax. Users can configure specific Markdown flavors to ensure compatibility across different technical environments. Beyond its primary interface, the project provides an embeddable editor component that can be integrated into external websites via sandboxed frames. It includes built-in cloud storage adapters for file synchronization and publishing, and supports containerized deployment within cluster environments.

Quill is a JavaScript rich text editor library used to build WYSIWYG web editors. It serves as a modular editor framework for creating browser-based document authoring tools with a customizable interface and document model. The system functions as a modular content editor, providing a plugin system to extend formatting and embedding capabilities. This allows for the development of specialized text editors through custom modules and formatting plugins. The library covers the implementation of visual content creation interfaces that render formatted text and media in real time. Its primary capabilities include rich text editing and the integration of visual authoring tools into web applications.