Features
Everything Total CMS can do.
A complete tour of the toolbox — from content modeling and the built-in MCP server that lets AI agents work with your real content, to the white-label admin, APIs, and automation. For a per-edition breakdown, see the feature matrix.
Content Modeling
20+ built-in content types
Blog, image, gallery, file, depot, text, number, date, toggle, color, url, email, svg and feed schemas ship built in. Bind one to a collection and edit.
Read moreCustom schemas Pro
Define your own object shapes as JSON files. The admin form, the list view, validation and the query surface are all generated from the schema.
Read more36+ admin field types
Rich text, dates, prices, colors, selects, lists, images, video, cards and decks — each with the right editor, the right storage shape and the right filters.
Read moreDecks Pro
Repeatable, reorderable sections on a single object — slides, pricing tiers, FAQs. One item schema, as many items as the editor needs.
Read moreSingleton collections
For content there is only ever one of — a homepage, an about page, global settings. One object, opened directly, with no list to navigate.
Read moreLocalized & secret fields
Store translations alongside the original, and keep API tokens and keys in masked fields that never render in a template by accident.
Demo data on tap
Faker-backed factory functions in Twig generate names, addresses, paragraphs, dates and images, so you can build and style a template before a single real record exists.
AI-Native
Built-in MCP server
An MCP server ships with the CMS, not as a plugin. One endpoint serves anonymous, API-key and OAuth callers, each seeing only what you exposed.
Read moreWorks with your agent
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code. Connect once over MCP and scaffold a complete site in a session — no plugin to install on either end.
Agents that write Pro
Agent writes run the same save path as the admin form. Patch merges only what you send, binary fields are untouchable, and access groups cap the reach.
Read moreAccess you control Pro
OAuth 2.1 with per-user consent and group-scoped permissions. An agent sees exactly what the person who authorised it can see — revocable, logged, and expiring.
AI-ready documentation
The Total CMS docs are served over MCP too, so your agent answers from current documentation rather than whatever it half-remembers from training.
Built for deep research
Standard search and fetch tools plus an llms.txt manifest, so ChatGPT and deep-research agents can cite your site accurately.
Admin Experience
A focused editor, not a page builder
Every collection gets a clean, purpose-built editing form. Clients edit content — they never touch structure or design.
Access groups & permissions
Per-group CRUD permissions over collections, schemas, settings and utility pages, enforced on every route and mirrored in the admin interface.
Read moreMember logins & gated content
Lock pages or sections behind a login backed by your own auth collection, so members never see the admin.
Read moreWhite-label admin
Your logo, your brand. Standard white-labels the admin; Pro removes Total CMS branding from every surface.
Passkeys & phone-friendly
Passwordless passkey login, and an admin that works end-to-end on a phone. Editing content from the couch is a feature.
Speaks seven languages
The admin ships in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and Polish — so a client edits in their own language, not yours.
Reports & relationship maps
Report across any collection, and visualise how collections and objects link together as a diagram when a content model gets big enough to lose track of.
Guided setup
A first-run wizard walks through environment, data location, your admin account, licensing, and server rules — then logs you straight in.
Images & Media
ImageWorks
On-the-fly resizing, cropping, format conversion and effects, cached automatically. Upload the original once and ask for what each template needs.
Read moreWatermarking
Logo and text watermarks applied on the server, with custom fonts, a size threshold, and schema settings that URL parameters cannot override.
Read moreVideo
Paste a link from eight hosted providers or a direct MP4. Total CMS detects the provider, stores the thumbnail, and renders a click-to-play embed.
Read morePodcasting
A show schema, an episode schema and one Twig call give you a feed the directories accept. Apple's rules on cover art, categories and explicit are enforced in the form.
Read moreBarcodes & QR codes
Generate QR codes and barcodes straight from your templates — product labels, tickets, menus, event passes, all rendered on the fly.
Depot file management
Multi-file fields with subfolders, size and type rules, and access control inherited from the collection. Files are served by URL, not hunted for over FTP.
Read moreProtected files
Put a file or depot behind a password or your access groups. A shared download or stream URL is not an open door: only the people you allow can fetch it, and everyone else is turned away.
Templates & Design
Twig templating
Plain Twig 3 templates with one cms global for collections, media, feeds and SEO markup. Automatic escaping, compiled templates, and no PHP to write.
Read morePlayground
Prototype and test Twig templates against your real content, right in the admin — with autosave.
Template Designer
Define a template inline in a development page and it syncs to your local templates folder and to production on every page load, authorised by a per-template token.
Read moreFront-end forms
Forms built in Twig from a collection's schema. Submissions save as objects, validation and uploads come with the field, and actions redirect, email or call a webhook.
Read moreLoad More & fragment caching
One Twig call paginates a collection or Data View over HTMX, with the first page rendered server-side. The cache tag stores fragments and invalidates them by collection.
Read moreHTMX fragments
Live search, faceted filtering, lazy sections, quick-view modals and zero-JavaScript forms, built from the API and the htmx that already ships on every page.
RSS & sitemap builders
RSS, Atom and podcast feeds built in Twig from any query, plus opt-in XML sitemaps per collection and a discoverable index at /sitemap.xml.
Read moreSEO built in
One call emits title, description, canonical, robots, Open Graph, Twitter and a JSON-LD graph for any page or object.
Read moreGit-first templates
Put a builder folder at the project root and your templates are version-controlled: the repo is the source of truth, the admin editor goes read-only, and git deploys them.
Localized front end
Dates, numbers, currencies and relative time formatted for the visitor’s language, with 25+ locales built in, a site default, and per-template overrides.
Site Builder
Site Builder
Pages live in the builder-pages collection with a route and a template. The router matches URLs at request time, so a page is live the moment you save it.
Read moreNo build step, ever
Pages are content, routed at request time. Add one in the admin and it is live — nothing to regenerate, nothing to redeploy, no static build to wait on.
Start from a starter
Scaffold a whole site in one command with a bundled starter — minimal, blog, business, or portfolio — templates and demo content seeded and ready to edit.
Routes with placeholders
Give a page a route like /blog/{id} and every object in the collection gets its own clean URL. Per-page redirects and status codes included.
Navigation that builds itself
Menus and links come from your pages, so a renamed route never leaves a dead link behind. Asset helpers add cache-busting automatically.
Pages you can gate
Put any page behind an access group, keep it as a draft until it is ready, or attach your own middleware — per page, from the admin.
Modern frontend, optional
Want a build pipeline? Scaffold a Vite setup for Sass and JavaScript. Don't want one? Plain CSS and Twig work exactly as well.
Data & Portability
Flat-file storage
Objects are JSON files under tcms-data, one folder per collection, with assets beside them. Version-controllable, scriptable, and portable to any PHP host.
Read moreMarkdown storage
Store a collection as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter instead of JSON, for docs and markdown-first blogs people would rather edit in a text editor or a git repo. One CLI command converts either way.
JumpStart export/import
Export schemas, collections, objects and templates to one JSON file and import it anywhere. Faker-backed factory blocks generate sample content on the way in.
Read moreImport from anywhere
Import from CSV, JSON, RSS feeds, WordPress, Alloy or Total CMS 1. Images and files come in by path, and large jobs run in the background.
Read morePush & pull sync
Deploy schemas, templates and collection settings from local to production with tcms push — content stays put, and a dry run shows what changes first.
Read moreAPIs & Automation
REST API
JSON endpoints for every collection: CRUD, filtered queries, property-level writes, uploads and reports. Pro adds API keys for external access.
Read morePHP API
Query collections and render content from any PHP code — the same API the admin itself is built on.
Automations Pro
Write a PHP handler, give it a cron schedule, a webhook, or a content event. Run history, guard rails and auto-disable are built in.
Read moreData Views Pro
Pre-compute and cache cross-collection queries with Twig. Views rebuild themselves when a dependent collection changes; templates read them instantly.
Read moreWebhooks Pro
Notify external services when content changes — deploys, rebuilds, notifications, anything with a URL.
CLI automation
The tcms command line manages collections, objects, schemas, imports, updates, and sync — scriptable, with JSON output.
Platform & Performance
Runs on any PHP host
PHP 8.2+ and a folder — that's the whole requirement. Install via Composer or upload a zip. No containers, no build pipeline.
Extensions
Add Twig functions, CLI commands, admin pages, routes, field types and widgets through a stable API. A broken extension cannot crash the site.
Read moreBundled extensions
Protect, Maintenance, Scheduled, A/B Split, Geo Redirect, Pushover, Algolia Search and the docs MCP tools ship in the box. Enable the ones you need; nothing runs until you do.
Multi-backend caching
APCu, Redis, Memcached, or filesystem caching — auto-detected, with one-click cache clearing for editors.
In-admin updates
Check, apply, and roll back updates from the admin or CLI. You decide when — nothing updates behind your back.
Secure by default
CSRF tokens, HTML and SVG sanitization, upload validation, path-traversal guards and security headers are on from the first request, with a guide for the parts your host controls.
Want to see which features come with each edition? Compare the full feature matrix →
Weighing Total CMS against another tool? See our honest head-to-head comparisons →
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