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wintercms

wintercms/winter

A free, self-hosted content management system built on the Laravel PHP framework, aimed at quick prototyping and simple development.

Open-source alternative to:WordPress

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What is it?

Winter CMS is a self-hosted content management system written in PHP on top of the Laravel framework. It is designed for developers and agencies who want to build websites and applications quickly while keeping the codebase simple and secure.

Winter is forked from October CMS and uses the in-house Storm library as a layer between Laravel and the Winter project, which is meant to reduce breaking changes. It is installed with Composer, and a command-line workflow (`winter:env`, `winter:up`) handles environment configuration, database migrations and creating an admin account.

The project is maintained by a team led by Luke Towers and supported by the Frostbyte Foundation. Documentation, tutorials and a Discord community are available for newcomers.

Key features

  • 01Built on the Laravel PHP framework.
  • 02Installable via Composer with a guided environment setup command.
  • 03Database migrations and admin account creation through a single CLI command.
  • 04Uses the Storm library to isolate the platform from Laravel changes.
  • 05Self-hosted and released under the MIT license.

Use cases

  • Building a marketing or company website that needs an editable content backend.
  • Prototyping a PHP web project quickly on the Laravel ecosystem.
  • Running a self-hosted CMS for an agency's client sites.

Quick start

  1. 1

    Install Winter with Composer

    composer create-project wintercms/winter example.com "dev-develop"
  2. 2

    Generate the environment file with your settings

    php artisan winter:env
  3. 3

    Run database migrations and create the admin account

    php artisan winter:up

Things to know

  • Development-branch install uses dev-develop, so the codebase may change frequently.
  • Requires PHP and Composer, plus a configured database before setup can complete.

In collections

Self-hosted appsFrameworks for building apps and websites

Topics

#cms#php#laravel#content-management#self-hosted#web-framework#cms-platform#hacktoberfest#winter#wintercms

FAQ

What is winter?
A free, self-hosted content management system built on the Laravel PHP framework, aimed at quick prototyping and simple development. Winter CMS is a self-hosted content management system written in PHP on top of the Laravel framework. It is designed for developers and agencies who want to build websites and applications quickly while keeping the codebase simple and secure.
Is winter free to use? What license does it have?
winter is open source under the MIT license. Check the license terms before using it in commercial products.
Is winter still maintained?
Actively maintained. The last commit to winter was on Nov 7, 2026.
What can I use winter for?
Building a marketing or company website that needs an editable content backend. Prototyping a PHP web project quickly on the Laravel ecosystem. Running a self-hosted CMS for an agency's client sites.
How do I install winter?
Install Winter with Composer: composer create-project wintercms/winter example.com "dev-develop" Generate the environment file with your settings: php artisan winter:env Run database migrations and create the admin account: php artisan winter:up
Where can I get winter?
The source code and installation instructions are on GitHub: https://github.com/wintercms/winter

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