Exponential / Build

Build With Exponential

Build with Exponential's Family of CMSs and DXPs designed to make building the web simple, stable, and upgradable.

Exponential was designed by experts to take PHP application development to the very edge of what is possible; today!

Why Build with Exponential

The web changes constantly. Frameworks come and go, hosting fashions shift, and the pressure to rewrite never fully stops. Exponential takes a different view: a well-designed CMS built on solid engineering principles should not need to be replaced — it should grow with you.

Exponential is the direct continuation of the eZ Publish 4 legacy, maintained and extended by the open-source community at exponential.earth and the team at 7x. It runs in production on PHP 8.x, supports modern databases, and ships with a security-hardened kernel — while preserving full template, extension, and content-model compatibility that existing sites rely on.

Simple by Design

Everything in Exponential is built around a single, learnable content model. Content classes define the shape of your data. Content objects hold the actual content. The content tree organises it all into a hierarchy that editors understand on day one. There is no hidden magic, no generated code to debug, and no build step between a template change and a visible result.

The URL structure mirrors the content tree directly. Edit a node name and the URL updates. Create a child node and its URL inherits the parent path. Human-readable, predictable, and easy to explain to anyone on your team.

Stable by Default

Exponential sites do not go down because of a CMS upgrade. The upgrade path from version to version is documented, tested, and executed with a single SQL migration script. There is no hidden state, no compiled asset pipeline to invalidate, and no package-lock churn to resolve before you can deploy.

The caching system is built into the kernel. Page caches, content caches, and template caches are managed automatically and can be cleared selectively or completely from the admin interface or from the command line: 

php bin/php/console exp:ezcache --clear-all

When a site is running well it stays running well. That is the Exponential promise.

Upgradable for the Long Term

Every release of Exponential is tagged, versioned, and fully documented in the change log. Backward compatibility is taken seriously — the documentation records every breaking change, every new feature, and every deprecated API in a dedicated backwards-compatibility file for each release series.

Because Exponential is free software under the GNU GPLv2 or later, you are never locked in to a vendor roadmap. You can fork, contribute, self-host, and upgrade on your own schedule — indefinitely.

What Exponential Gives You Out of the Box

  • Flexible content modelling — define any data structure with content classes and datatype attributes
  • Multi-siteaccess support — run multiple sites, languages, or audiences from one installation
  • Role-based access control — granular permissions down to individual content objects
  • Built-in full-text search with a pluggable search engine backend
  • Workflow engine for content approval, publishing queues, and scheduled publishing
  • REST API and JSON views for headless and hybrid delivery
  • Full extension API — modules, datatypes, template operators, workflow events, and more
  • Cluster-ready file storage with database or distributed filesystem backends
  • Static cache generation for maximum front-end performance
  • Internationalisation and localisation support for any number of languages

The Exponential Product Family

Exponential is not one product — it is a family of CMSs and DXPs that share the same proven kernel, the same content model, and the same upgrade path. Each member of the family is optimised for a different use case, audience, or deployment context.

Exponential CMS — The Core Platform

Exponential CMS is the flagship product. It is a full-featured, general-purpose Content Management System suitable for everything from a personal blog to a large enterprise publishing platform. The current stable release is available on GitHub and can be installed in minutes on any PHP 8.x-capable server.

Exponential CMS is what you choose when you want maximum flexibility. You define your own content classes, build your own templates, and assemble your own extension set. The admin interface gives editors a clean, structured workspace. The developer API gives you full control over every layer of the stack.

Exponential Basic — Fast-Start Distribution

Exponential Basic is a pre-configured distribution of Exponential CMS that comes with a curated set of content classes, a clean responsive design, and sensible default settings already in place. It is the fastest way to get a professional website running without starting from a blank canvas.

Exponential Basic is the right choice when you need a site live quickly and want to spend your time on content and customisation rather than initial configuration. Everything it ships with can be extended, overridden, or replaced as your needs grow.

Exponential Platform Legacy — Continuity for Established Sites

Exponential Platform Legacy is the migration and continuity package for organisations running eZ Publish 4.x sites that need a clear, supported path forward. It provides a curated set of compatibility shims, data migration tools, and upgrade scripts that carry your existing content, content classes, extensions, and URL structure forward into the current Exponential 6.x codebase — with no data loss and no forced redesign.

The Legacy package is the right choice when you have a site that has been running reliably for years and you want to modernise the platform beneath it without disrupting your editors, your URLs, or your existing integrations. It gives you:

  • Automated content class and content object migration from eZ Publish 4.x databases
  • URL alias preservation — existing bookmarks and search engine rankings stay intact
  • Extension compatibility layer — many eZ Publish 4.x extensions continue to function without modification
  • Side-by-side validation tooling to compare old and new output before you cut over
  • A documented, step-by-step upgrade runbook maintained by the Exponential core team

Once the migration is complete, the site runs on the full current Exponential stack. All future releases, security patches, and new features apply normally. The Legacy package is a bridge, not a permanent dependency.

Exponential Platform Nexus — The Next Generation

Exponential Platform Nexus is the forward-looking edition of the Exponential platform, built for organisations that are ready to adopt modern architectural patterns while keeping the content management experience that makes Exponential uniquely productive. Nexus extends the core CMS with a headless-first API layer, a modern JavaScript frontend bridge, and a composable service architecture that integrates cleanly with external systems.

Nexus is designed for teams building ambitious digital products — interactive web applications, mobile-first experiences, multi-channel publishing pipelines, and AI-augmented content workflows — that still need the robust editorial tooling, content modelling flexibility, and operational stability that Exponential is known for. It gives you:

  • GraphQL and REST API-first content delivery — serve any frontend, any device, any channel
  • Composable frontend bridge — connect React, Vue, Next.js, or any modern JavaScript framework to your Exponential content tree
  • Event-driven content pipeline — publish events to queues, webhooks, or streaming platforms on every content change
  • AI content augmentation hooks — integrate large language model services for automated tagging, summarisation, and translation within the editorial workflow
  • Advanced personalisation and audience segmentation built on the Exponential content model
  • Unified admin — editors use the same familiar Exponential interface regardless of how content is delivered to end users

Nexus runs on the same kernel and shares the same upgrade path as all other Exponential products. Moving from Exponential CMS to Nexus is an extension install and a configuration change — not a platform migration.

Exponential DXP — Digital Experience Platform

The Exponential DXP extends the core CMS with advanced personalisation, audience segmentation, A/B testing, and analytics integration. It is designed for organisations that need to deliver targeted digital experiences at scale — across web, mobile, and other digital touchpoints — while keeping editorial workflows simple for non-technical users.

The DXP layer is built as a set of Exponential extensions, meaning it runs on the same kernel and is fully compatible with all existing Exponential sites. There is no separate platform to manage and no migration required when moving from CMS to DXP.

A Shared Foundation

Every product in the Exponential family shares:

  • The same eZ Publish 4-derived kernel, hardened for PHP 8.x and modern security requirements
  • The same content class and content object data model
  • The same extension API — extensions work across all products without modification
  • The same upgrade process — a SQL migration script and a file deployment
  • The same GNU GPLv2+ license — free software, always, with no proprietary lock-in

This means skills, templates, extensions, and knowledge transfer freely across every project you build on the Exponential platform. Learning the system once gives you mastery across the entire family.

The Exponential Ecosystem

Around the core products there is a growing ecosystem of community-maintained extensions, integrations, and services. Highlights include:

Start Building Today

Getting from zero to a running Exponential site is straightforward. Here is the complete path from download to your first published page.

Step 1 — Download

Download the latest stable release from the Exponential releases page on GitHub. Stable releases are tagged, checksummed, and safe for production. If you are an experienced developer and want to track the latest changes, cloning the repository directly keeps upgrades as simple as 

git pull

.

Step 2 — Install

Copy the release files to your web server virtual host document root — the folder your web server points to as the site root. Then open a browser and navigate to your site to start the setup wizard. The wizard walks you through database configuration, admin account creation, and siteaccess setup in a few short steps.

For full installation instructions, including server requirements and advanced configuration options, see the installation documentation.

Step 3 — Configure Your Content Model

Once installed, log in to the admin interface and navigate to the Content Classes section. Define the content types your site needs — articles, products, events, team members, or anything else. Add the attributes that describe each type. This is the foundation everything else is built on, and it takes minutes to set up.

Expert tip: Start with two or three content classes and expand as you discover what your project actually needs. Exponential makes it easy to add attributes and classes at any time without migrating existing content.

Step 4 — Build Your Design

Exponential uses a powerful override-based template system. Create a design folder under 

design/

, add your templates and CSS, and configure the siteaccess to use your design. The template documentation covers the full template language including variables, operators, loops, conditions, and the override system.

You do not need to touch any core files. Every template in the system can be overridden at the design level. Your customisations survive upgrades intact.

Step 5 — Publish Content

With your content model and design in place, start creating content. Use the admin interface to build your content tree — folders, articles, pages, or whatever your content classes define. Publish immediately or schedule for a future date. The workflow engine can require approval before any content goes live if your team needs it.

Warm your caches after publishing to ensure every visitor gets the fastest possible response: 

php bin/php/console exp:preload --siteaccess=your_siteaccess

Command-Line Tools

Exponential 6.0.15 introduces bin/php/console, a Symfony-style command dispatcher that gives you instant access to every CLI script in the system. Common tasks are now a single readable command away:

  • php bin/php/console exp:ezcache --clear-all
    — clear all caches
  • php bin/php/console exp:preload
    — warm all page caches
  • php bin/php/console exp:updatesearchindex
    — rebuild the search index
  • php bin/php/console exp:ezpgenerateautoloads
    — regenerate class autoload arrays
  • php bin/php/console list
    — discover all available commands

Get Help and Get Involved

The Exponential community is welcoming to developers and site builders at every level of experience. If you get stuck:

If Exponential saves you time, helps you ship a project, or earns you revenue, consider giving back. You can sponsor the project on GitHub, contribute code or documentation, or simply tell others about it. Free software thrives on the participation of the people who use it.

Remember

Exponential is free software for a free web. Build something great with it.

— The Exponential Team and the 7x Community