tinymash

tinymash is a flat-file CMS and publishing platform for PHP 8.4.1+. It stores content on disk, does not require a database server, and ships with both a public site and an admin interface. The current development line is also smoke-tested with PHP 8.5.x.

It is built for self-hosted publishing: pages, posts, author spaces, themes, plugins, media, tags, feeds, maintenance tasks, and a CLI for day-to-day operations.

What tinymash is for

tinymash is a good fit if you want:

• a database-free CMS
• a small self-hosted publishing stack
• pages and blog posts in the same system
• multiple authors without adding a lot of platform weight
• a PHP application that stays readable and easy to deploy

What ships with it

The shipped runtime includes:

• a web-based admin interface
• flat-file content, draft, user, and media storage
• public themes and theme settings
• plugin support
• media uploads for editor and site imagery
• feeds, tags, menus, search, scheduled publishing, backup/export, imports, and housekeeping tooling
• a CLI for cache management, deploy builds, housekeeping, imports, backups, and other maintenance work

Normal installation path

The normal production path is to run tinymash from a prepared runtime tree and point your web server at public/.

If you are holding a tinymash deploy package, the short version is:

1. copy the runtime tree to the server
2. point the web root at public/
3. make data/, users/, and tmp/ writable by the PHP/web-server user
4. run php8.4 bin/tinymash.php setup
5. review system settings in the admin UI
6. set up scheduled publishing and housekeeping from cron

The full step-by-step version is in INSTALL.md.

Runtime requirements

• PHP 8.4.1 or newer; PHP 8.5.x is also smoke-tested
• a web server such as Nginx or Apache
• PHP-FPM or another supported PHP SAPI
• writable data/, users/, and tmp/ directories

Required PHP extensions:

• mbstring
• json
• dom
• session
• openssl
• fileinfo

Recommended PHP extensions for full feature coverage:

• curl
• gd or imagick
• simplexml
• exif
• intl
• zip

For ordinary public and admin use, tinymash can run with a small PHP memory limit; 16M is enough for many small sites. Larger batch jobs such as imports, backups/exports, media cleanup, and big upload/import runs may need more memory. The CLI import commands also accept explicit memory-limit options where that matters.

Compatibility

• Tinymash 1.x requires PHP 8.4.1 or newer. PHP 8.5 is tested.
• Patch and minor releases should preserve configuration, users, content, drafts, media, and plugin data.
• Upgrades use upgrade:prepare to create a clean sibling installation. Do not overwrite an existing installation.
• Required data migrations will be documented with the release.
• Documented plugin and theme interfaces remain compatible throughout 1.x. Planned removals will be deprecated for at least one minor release.
• Internal classes, storage paths, templates, HTML structure, and CSS selectors are not compatibility guarantees.

First setup

After copying a prepared runtime tree and pointing the web server at public/, run setup from the tinymash root:

php8.4 bin/tinymash.php setup

Setup creates app/config/tinymash.json when needed and creates the first superadmin user. Existing configs are preserved on reruns.

For an existing installation, extract the new release into an empty sibling directory and use its CLI to inspect and copy authoritative state from the old tree:

cd /path/to/new-tinymash
php8.4 bin/tinymash.php upgrade:prepare /path/to/old-tinymash --dry-run

The command reports unmanaged local paths and missing extensions without copying them. See INSTALL.md before performing the real state copy and directory swap.

Command line

Common operator commands are documented in CLI.md.

Sample files

Public sample files live under samples/:

• samples/server/nginx.sample.conf
• samples/server/apache.sample.conf
• samples/server/php-fpm.sample.conf
• samples/server/php-opcache-production.ini
• samples/server/php-opcache-development.ini
• samples/server/tinymash.logrotate
• samples/cron/tinymash.cron
• samples/deploy/rsync-deploy.sh

Files and paths

• public/: web root
• app/config/tinymash.json: main runtime configuration; deploy packages ship app/config/tinymash.json.example as the safe starting point
• data/: content, drafts, media, caches, plugin/theme data
• users/: user records
• tmp/: temporary runtime files
• bin/tinymash.php: CLI entrypoint

Source checkouts

If you are running tinymash directly from a source checkout instead of a prepared runtime tree, install the PHP dependencies first and treat that as a developer/operator workflow rather than the normal end-user install path.

License

tinymash is licensed under AGPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

Copyright 2026 Joaquim Homrighausen; all rights reserved.

Credits

tinymash uses a small set of bundled third-party packages and frontend assets, including:

• Bootstrap
• Bootstrap Icons
• highlight.js
• emoji-picker-element and bundled emoji picker data
• flightphp/core
• flightphp/runway
• latte/latte
• league/commonmark
• symfony/mailer