Beta · ⭐ — · MIT

A flat-file CMS for people
who like both ACF
and the command line.

Files on disk. A visual field builder. PHP or Twig themes. Edit in the admin, in your IDE, or with an agent — no database, no lock-in, no ceremony.

Read the docs View on GitHub

Compare with WordPress, Kirby, Astro and others →

/admin/blog/hello-world

hello-world.md

---
title: Hello, world
date: 2026-05-17
tags: [welcome]
---

# Hello, world

A starter post showing **front
matter** and the *Markdown* body.

~ frontpress

$ unzip frontpress-studio.zip
$ open http://localhost/admin
✓ ready in 0.42s

Product tour

A real admin, not a config file.

Field builder, media library, theme editor, backups — all in the browser. None of it requires a database.

Walkthrough

See FrontPress in action.

A short guided tour — install, write a post, theme it, ship.

0 databases to manage
< 0s install to first post
0+ PHP, that's all you need
0% MIT open source

The building blocks

Everything you need, nothing you don't.

Four pillars, designed to be hackable. Stack them, swap them, or get out of their way.

Storage
Flat files, no database

Every post, page, and config is a file on disk. Edit in the admin, edit in your IDE, or commit changes in git. Move the folder, move the site.

📄 hello-world.md 📄 theming.md 📄 getting-started.md 📁 media/ 📁 backups/
Authoring
Markdown all the way down

YAML on top, prose below. Custom fields, taxonomies, and archives generate themselves. Raw HTML passes through when you need it.
```
---
title: Field notes
tags: [ideas, drafts]
---

## Today
- Outline the talk
- **Draft** the intro
```
Editor
No front-matter to memorize

The biggest pain point of file-based CMSes is remembering YAML keys. FrontPress's editor reads your field schema and renders proper inputs — dates, dropdowns, toggles, image pickers. You write prose, not metadata.

Title Hello, world

Date 📅 2026-05-17

Tags
welcome intro + add

Category
tutorial news release
Theme editor
Edit your theme in the browser

A built-in code editor for Twig templates and CSS — syntax highlighting, autosave, file tree, and live preview. Tweak the design from any laptop without spinning up an IDE or pushing to git.
templates/

post.twig

page.twig

archive.twig

assets/

style.css

theme.json
post.twig
```
1 {% extends '_layout.twig' %}
2
3 {% block content %}
4   <article>
5     <h1>{{ meta.title }}</h1>
6     {{ html|raw }}
7   </article>
8 {% endblock %}
```

Templating

Pick PHP or Twig — both ship

Write themes in plain PHP if that's your home turf, or Twig for the inheritance + auto-escape model. Partials, asset helpers, and folder-aware archives work the same in either engine. Two starter themes in the box.

post.php PHP

<?php partial('header'); ?>
<article>
  <h1><?= e($meta['title']) ?></h1>
  <?= $html ?>
</article>
<?php partial('footer'); ?>

post.twig Twig

{% extends '_layout.twig' %}
{% block content %}
  <article>
    <h1>{{ meta.title }}</h1>
    {{ html|raw }}
  </article>
{% endblock %}

SEO
SEO that ships on day one

Sitemap, robots.txt, OpenGraph, Twitter cards, and JSON-LD are auto-generated for every page. Override per-post via front matter when you need to. No plugin, no setup.
example.com › blog › hello-world

Hello, world — FrontPress Studio

A starter post showing front matter, Markdown body, and taxonomy. Edit or delete from the admin.
- og:image✓ auto
- twitter:card✓ auto
- json-ldBlogPosting
- sitemap.xml✓ included

AI-native by accident

Your coding agent already speaks FrontPress.

Every post, page, and template is a plain file. Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor — any agent that can edit files can edit your site. No MCP server. No API tokens. No integration to maintain.

~/site · zsh

$ cd site/content/blog
$ claude "write a release note for v0.0.78"

● Reading site/content/blog/_index.md
● Reading site/content/blog/hello-world.md  (style reference)
● Writing site/content/blog/v0-0-78.md

✓ Created post with title, date, tags, excerpt
✓ Ready to commit

$ git diff --stat
 site/content/blog/v0-0-78.md | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Point and write

Drop your agent in site/content/ and it has the whole content tree. No vector DB to index, no schema to introspect — it's all there.
Themes are just files too

Ask Claude to "redesign the post page" and it edits the Twig template directly. No proprietary block format, no IDE plugin — just .twig and .css.
git diff is your audit log

Every AI edit shows up in version control. Review, merge, or revert — same workflow as the rest of your code.
No MCP, no API keys

FrontPress doesn't need a bridge to AI tools. Filesystem access is the bridge. If your agent can read a folder, it can run your site.

FrontPress Local

One click on Mac.

Skip the terminal. FrontPress Local installs PHP, scaffolds your site, and serves it on localhost — your browser opens to a working install. Fully offline, no cloud, no account.

Download for macOS Source on GitHub →

v1.2.0 · Universal binary (Apple Silicon & Intel) · ~8 MB · No account required

Workflow

Or zip + 4 steps, your call.

No build step. No env vars. No "before you begin, install Postgres."

01

Drop the zip

Unzip into your document root. PHP 8.1+ and mod_rewrite is the whole stack.
02

Sign in at /admin

First run shows a temporary password. A pinned banner nags until you set a real one under Settings → Security.
03

Write Markdown

Hit New, pick a folder, type. Front matter sets the title, date, tags, and anything else you want.
04

Theme it your way

Edit Twig templates and a single style.css. Switch active_theme in site/config.json to flip looks.

Already on WordPress?

One click from WordPress to FrontPress.

The FrontPress MD Exporter is a free WordPress plugin that turns your posts, pages, custom post types, taxonomies, ACF fields, and media into a ready-to-drop site/content/ tree. Install on the source site, click Run Export, drop the ZIP into a fresh FrontPress install.

Read the migration guide Source on GitHub

wp-admin · MD Export

► Post Types     ✓ posts → blog
                ✓ page  → pages
                ✓ docs  → docs
► Taxonomies     ✓ categories, tags
► ACF fields     ✓ 12 groups detected
► Media          ✓ per-post folders

$ click "Run Export"

● Converting 248 posts to Markdown
● Collecting 1,432 media files
● Writing site/content/…
● Packaging frontpress-export.zip

✓ Download ready · 38.2 MB

Clean Markdown out

WordPress HTML becomes properly formatted Markdown with YAML front matter — headings, lists, code blocks, links, images all preserved.
ACF and meta, fully typed

Full Advanced Custom Fields support — text, numbers, booleans, dates, repeaters, groups, flexible content, and media fields all export with proper types.
Media comes along

Featured images, inline images, gallery and file fields are collected into per-post folders. URLs are rewritten to local paths so nothing 404s.
Multisite networks

Export entire WordPress networks at once. Per-subsite configuration is respected; the output layout matches FrontPress's /:folder/:slug router.

Download the plugin

Ready when you are

Start writing in five minutes.

Download the zip, drop it on your host, sign in at /admin. There's no step three.

Get started → Theming guide

A flat-file CMS for people who like both ACF and the command line.

Flat files, no database

Markdown all the way down

No front-matter to memorize

Edit your theme in the browser

Pick PHP or Twig — both ship

SEO that ships on day one

Point and write

Themes are just files too

git diff is your audit log

No MCP, no API keys

Drop the zip

Sign in at /admin

Write Markdown

Theme it your way

Clean Markdown out

ACF and meta, fully typed

Media comes along

Multisite networks

Built in the open. Funded by you.

Start writing in five minutes.

A flat-file CMS for people
who like both ACF
and the command line.

`git diff` is your audit log