Phire CMS
Phire CMS (pronounced “fire”) is a small open-source PHP content management system created by developer Nick Sagona. Version 1.0 came out in November 2010, and version 2 was rewritten on top of his Pop PHP Framework. It is released under the BSD licence and runs on PHP and MySQL.
How it models content
Phire is deliberately lean. The core handles users, roles, and module management, and most content features come from modules:
- Content items organised by content type, with pages and posts as the usual starting point
- Categories for grouping and nesting content
- Fields for adding custom data to content types
- Media libraries for uploads
- Templates and themes for presentation
Early versions also included multi-site management and a separate mobile presentation layer, features that were unusual for a CMS that size at the time.
Phire CMS and WordPress compared
| Phire CMS | Closest in WordPress |
|---|---|
| Content types | Posts, pages, and custom post types |
| Categories | Categories (hierarchical) |
| Fields module | Custom fields |
| Modules | Plugins |
| Themes and templates | Themes |
| Users and roles | Users and roles |
What moving involves
- Back up the MySQL database and the uploads directory.
- Read content directly from the database. There is no WordPress importer for Phire, so a short script that reads its tables and writes WordPress posts is the realistic route.
- Recreate categories first, then content, so relationships stay intact.
- Copy media files across and update the image paths inside content.
- Map old URLs to new ones and set up 301 redirects. See 301 redirects in WordPress.
Because the database schema is small and readable, the move is often simpler than from a bigger CMS. The work is mostly in writing and checking the script.
Current status
Development has slowed to a near stop. The last stable release listed on Wikipedia is 2.1.0 from July 2016. Sites still running Phire should plan a move, since an unmaintained PHP application is a security risk on modern hosting.