Grav: a Databaseless free Open-source WordPress Competitor

Grav is an open-source CMS and web publishing system which uses Flat-file to store content and data instead of a Database.

If you are familiar with WordPress, then you know it has a rich community, a vast extensions libraries, free and commercial and a numerous list of themes. The main reason was it is a user-friendly system and does not take much time or effort to install and run.

Grav CMS resembles WordPress in many aspects:

1. Clean admin interface
2. Multi-languages support
3. Dozens of supported themes and extensions
4. One-click installation for extensions and themes
5. One-click upgrade
6. Built-in SEO support
7. and a powerful content editor

Unlike many flat-file CMSs, Grav also features a built-in simple backup and restore system which makes the process smooth and reliable.

A strong community of users and developers is what makes  WordPress popular, but so as Grav. Because, it features a developer-friendly API for building themes and plugins as well as a rich documentation, community developers keep post new  themes, extensions and upgrades.

Grav Features

1. Easy to setup, configure and upgrade
2. Built-in backup and restore system
3. Built-in statistics
4. Full-featured dashboard
5. User login with automatic password hashing
6. One click upgrade
7. WYSIWYG editor
8. Markdown editor
9. One-click theme setup and upgrade
10. Page and posts creation, editing, deleting, duplicate and copy
11. Media support: file upload and download
12. Syntax highlighting
13. Theme manager
14. Plugins manager
15. ACL for admin user access
16. 2-Factor Authentication
17. Comments with advanced comments' manager
18. Caching engine
19. one-click cache reset button
20. Logs and reporting
21. Scheduler

Extend Grav with plugins

Grav has an impressive long list of plugins and many of them are officially tested and released by Grav team. Most of them are essentials in any website which we highly recommend.

However, you may consider checking and using the official plugins first before the community ones, as some of unofficial community plugins crashed the site (which was the reason why switched to another system).

Here is a list of some useful official plugins created by Grav team:

1. RSS Feed
2. CDN
3. Custom CSS
4. Archives
5. Comments
6. CORS
7. Custom HTTP headers
8. Data manager
9. DNS Block List
10. GitHub integration
11. GitHub Sync manager
12. Images Lightbox
13. Lightbox gallery
14. Instagram feed
15. Login LDAP
16. Auth2 Login
17. Page ToC (Table-of-Content)
18. Related pages
19. Search
20. Revisions
21. Maintenance Mode

Install Grav CMS in a few mins on DigitalOcean

Before I install Automad, one week ago, I had a good smooth run with Grav, I really like how it takes control of everything starting from configuration, content management and backup. It took less than 4 mins to get it up and running at a DigitalOcean Server.

All is required is having your Docterfile ready, we recommend using the official image:

1. Clone the repo
2. Build the image docker build -t grav:latest .
3. Run your Grav image with the latest Grav Admin docker run -p 8000:80 grav:latest
4. Optional: If you want to run it with a custom volume: docker run -d -p 8000:80 --restart always -v grav_data:/var/www/html grav:latest
5. Head to http://localhost:8000 and create your first admin account.

Don't forget to configure your Ngnix and domain SSL.

License

Grav is an open-source project released and distributed under MIT license.

Conclusion

Grav is a features-rich CMS solution for enterprise and individuals. It is highly customizable, extensible and modular. Moreover, it has a large supportive community.

Without database, you don't need to worry about SQL injection, malicious plugins  or other issues of using a popular software like WordPress as a target.

Resources

1. https://getgrav.org/#why_grav
2. https://github.com/getgrav/grav
3. https://github.com/getgrav/docker-grav