e107
e107 is a free, open-source PHP content management system that uses MySQL and Bootstrap for its front end. It has been around since the early 2000s and is maintained by a small but active community on GitHub.
How it models content
- News items are the primary content type, equivalent to blog posts. They support categories, inline editing, and summaries
- Pages are static content, used for about pages, terms, and similar
- Menus are widget-based navigation blocks placed in template areas
- Plugins extend functionality — forums, galleries, chatboxes, download managers, and more
- Themes control presentation and are Bootstrap-based in current versions
e107’s content model is straightforward compared to more complex CMS platforms. News items and pages are the two main types, and the plugin system handles everything else.
e107 and WordPress compared
| e107 | Closest in WordPress |
|---|---|
| News items | Posts |
| Pages | Pages |
| News categories | Categories |
| Menus (widget-based) | Menus and widget areas |
| Plugins | Plugins |
| Themes (Bootstrap) | Themes |
The content model is similar enough that news items map cleanly to posts and pages to pages. The practical work is extracting the content from e107’s database (there is no built-in full-site export) and handling any plugin-specific content like forum threads or download archives, which need separate treatment.
Current status
Actively maintained. The current stable line is v2.3.x with v2.4 in development. The community is small but consistent, with regular commits on GitHub.