Birkly

A flat-file, modular CMS — upload and run. No database, no build step.

Quick start

1. Extract the release zip on your server (or run locally).
2. Open 0_START-HERE.html for setup steps.
3. Start the built-in server for local testing:

chmod +x ./start-server.sh
./start-server.sh

Admin: http://localhost:8080/admin

Create the first admin user when the browser setup has not done it yet:

BIRKLY_ADMIN_PASSWORD='YourPassword123!' php scripts/create-default-user.php

The default email is admin@localhost. Pass [email protected] to use another. If an admin account already exists, the script leaves it unchanged.

Where your site lives

Path	Purpose
content/collections/	Entries and collection schemas (JSON)
project/	Public website files (HTML, CSS, assets)
media/	Uploaded files
plugins/	Installed extensions (empty on fresh install)
settings/	Site and plugin configuration

Install plugins from the Birkly Marketplace or upload a plugin zip in Settings → Plugins.

Documentation

• Birkly-Docs — guides, API reference, plugin development
• CONTRIBUTING.md — issues and pull requests for the open-source CMS
• SECURITY.md — vulnerability reporting and secure self-hosting

Production

1. Upload the release files to your web host (Apache or Nginx).
2. Apache: use the included .htaccess when available.
3. Nginx: see nginx.conf.example in the full development repository.
4. Point your domain at the install; admin is at /admin.

Docker / Dokploy: one volume at /app/data — see docs/deployment/docker.md.

Local development (maintainers)

Official plugin sources and the full test suite live in the private Birkly-Marketplace ops repository. Clone it alongside this repo and run CI from there — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

./scripts/install-dev-plugins.sh   # optional: install official plugins for dev

Releases

Self-host builds are published on GitHub Releases. Versioning follows RELEASE.md: 0.0.x alpha, 0.1.x beta, 1.0.0 first stable release.

License

Birkly is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or any later version. See LICENSE.

The Map field includes Leaflet 1.9.4 so the admin map works without loading it from another website. Leaflet stays under the BSD 2-Clause license in fieldtypes/Map/leaflet/LICENSE. That license applies only to those files.