Website Development on October CMS

Website Development with CMS October CMS

October CMS is a PHP CMS based on Laravel, released in 2014. Version 3 is completely rewritten: modern Laravel 10+, Composer installation, Tailwind in the interface. Supports both classic PHP templates and headless mode via API.

When to Choose October CMS

October CMS is well suited when the team knows Laravel. Plugins are Laravel packages using Eloquent, Blade, Events. Built-in tools: Tailor (flexible content builder), Builder (plugin generation via UI), RainLab plugins (Blog, Users, Pages, Translate).

Architecture

october-project/
├── themes/
│   └── mytheme/
│       ├── theme.yaml
│       ├── layouts/
│       │   └── default.htm
│       ├── pages/
│       │   ├── index.htm
│       │   └── blog-post.htm
│       ├── partials/
│       │   ├── header.htm
│       │   └── footer.htm
│       └── assets/
├── plugins/
│   └── mycompany/
│       └── mysite/       # custom project plugin
├── config/
└── storage/

Page Structure (.htm file)

title = "Blog"
url = "/blog"
layout = "default"
is_hidden = 0

[blogPosts posts]
posts_per_page = 12
category_filter = ""
sort_order = "published_at desc"
==
{% put styles %}
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ ['~/assets/css/blog.css'] | theme }}">
{% endput %}

<div class="blog-listing">
  {% for post in posts %}
    {% partial "blog/post-card" post=post %}
  {% endfor %}

  {% if posts.lastPage > 1 %}
    {% partial "pagination" items=posts %}
  {% endif %}
</div>

Tailor: Flexible Content Without Plugins

Tailor (October 3+) is a built-in content modeling system, similar to ACF in WordPress:

# blueprints/blog.yaml
uuid: a6e3a3c4-9d1f-4a1e-b9d2-d7c8e8f1a2b3
handle: Blog\Post
type: entry

fields:
  title:
    label: Title
    type: text
    required: true

  slug:
    label: Slug
    type: text
    preset:
      field: title
      type: slug

  content:
    label: Content
    type: richeditor

  featured_image:
    label: Featured Image
    type: fileupload
    mode: image
    imageWidth: 1200
    imageHeight: 630

  category:
    label: Category
    type: entries
    source: Blog\Category
    maxItems: 1

  published_at:
    label: Publication Date
    type: datepicker
    mode: datetime

Components

Components are the main unit of logic in October CMS. They encapsulate data for the template:

// plugins/mycompany/mysite/components/LatestPosts.php
namespace MyCompany\MySite\Components;

use Cms\Classes\ComponentBase;
use MyCompany\MySite\Models\Post;

class LatestPosts extends ComponentBase
{
    public function componentDetails(): array
    {
        return [
            'name'        => 'Latest Posts',
            'description' => 'Displays the latest blog posts',
        ];
    }

    public function defineProperties(): array
    {
        return [
            'limit' => [
                'title'       => 'Number of posts',
                'type'        => 'string',
                'default'     => '6',
                'validationPattern' => '^[0-9]+$',
            ],
        ];
    }

    public function onRun(): void
    {
        $this->page['posts'] = Post::published()
            ->with('featured_image', 'categories')
            ->orderBy('published_at', 'desc')
            ->limit((int) $this->property('limit'))
            ->get();
    }
}

Development Timeline