b2evolution
b2evolution is an open-source PHP blogging and CMS platform that forked from b2/cafelog in 2003 — the same ancestor that WordPress came from. It runs on PHP and MySQL, and was designed to handle multiple blogs from a single installation.
How it models content
- Collections are the core organising unit. Each collection can be a blog, a photo gallery, a forum, or a manual with hierarchical chapters
- Posts (called items) are the main content type within a collection
- Categories organise posts within collections, and can be nested
- Comments are built in and support moderation
- Skins control presentation, roughly equivalent to themes
The multi-collection design is the main structural difference from WordPress. A single b2evolution install running five blogs would typically become either a WordPress multisite or five separate installs.
b2evolution and WordPress compared
| b2evolution | Closest in WordPress |
|---|---|
| Collections | Individual sites (multisite) or categories on a single site |
| Posts / items | Posts |
| Categories | Categories |
| Comments | Comments |
| Skins | Themes |
Post content and comments transfer straightforwardly — both platforms share an ancestor, and the data models are similar at the single-blog level. The complication is the multi-collection structure: flattening several blogs into one site requires decisions about how to reorganise content. URL patterns will not match without redirect rules.
Current status
Effectively end of life. The developer announced the project was winding down in 2022, with only security fixes after that. The b2evolution.net site was locked to read-only in 2024. Any site still running it should be planning a move.