tinymash
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README.md

tinymash is a flat-file CMS and publishing platform for PHP 8.4+. It stores content on disk, does not require a database server, and ships with both a public site and an admin interface.

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, 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. create app/config/tinymash.json from app/config/tinymash.json.example if it does not already exist, then review it
  5. create the first admin user
  6. set up housekeeping from cron

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

Runtime requirements

  • PHP 8.4 or newer
  • 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

First admin user

Before you can use /admin/login, create at least one local admin user:

php8.4 bin/tinymash.php user set-password admin strong-password-here superadmin

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/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
#readme #docs