SHSelfHostIndex
FO

Formwork

Flat-file CMS for personal sites and blogs

Content Management Systems ★ 79 stars Easy setup MIT

Formwork is a flat-file content management system built to be simple, lightweight, and quick to set up for personal websites and blogs. Content is stored in plain text files with no database dependency.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Flat-file content
  • Built-in admin panel
  • Markdown editing
  • No database needed

Strengths

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Written in PHP
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM

Is Formwork secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect Formwork's latest release (2.3.16). OSV.dev lists 8 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2026-105950, published 2026-10-06 (8 days ago)

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

Formwork replaces

Self-hosted WordPress alternativesSelf-hosted Ghost alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Formwork? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 77 · good

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for Formwork](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/formwork-cms.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/formwork-cms/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/formwork-cms/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/formwork-cms.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for Formwork"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/formwork-cms.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Formwork
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/formwork-cms/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

Similar content management systems apps