frontpress-cms

name	frontpress-cms
description	FrontPress Studio framework internals — PHP classes under cms/lib/, REST controllers, services (MediaService, Mailer, Updater, BackupService, Index, ThemeService), Twig environment, Markdown content tree, content/folder routing, update pipeline, release process. Use when editing the framework itself (cms/, root entry-point PHP), debugging the admin REST API, or shipping a new framework feature/release.
license	MIT

FrontPress Studio — CMS internals

How users activate this skill

This file is bundled with every FrontPress Studio install under .claude/skills/frontpress-cms/. Open the install's root directory in Claude Code (the Claude CLI/desktop dev tool) and this skill auto-loads whenever the conversation touches framework internals. Users who run Claude in another tool can copy this folder into their ~/.claude/skills/ to load it globally.

No "connect site folder" step is required — the working directory of your Claude session IS the site folder. If Claude is in app/public/ of your install, every path reference below is already resolved.

When to use this skill

Apply when the user is working on the FrontPress framework itself — not when building a theme or authoring content. Triggers:

• Editing files under cms/lib/ or cms/lib/Api/
• Touching root entry-point PHP (index.php, admin.php, bootstrap.php, router.php)
• Debugging the admin React app talking to the REST API
• Cutting a new release / running the in-place update flow
• Adding a new content type, helper, or service

Skip and load frontpress-theme instead when the work is under site/themes/<name>/ or site/content/.

Repo layout (canonical FrontPress install)

app/public/                # document root
├── index.php              # public-site front controller (routes + /uploads/* serving)
├── admin.php              # admin SPA entry — auths + serves admin/ build
├── bootstrap.php          # autoload + config + globals
├── router.php             # built-in PHP server router (php -S)
├── config.php             # admin creds + APP_ENV (NOT committed; survives updates)
├── .htaccess              # Apache rewrites — keep entry-points working
├── admin/                 # built React bundle (Vite output) — replaced on update
│   ├── index.php
│   └── assets/
├── cms/
│   ├── VERSION            # framework version, bumped LAST on update
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── composer.json
│   ├── vendor/
│   ├── templates/         # PHP templates (admin SPA shell, error pages)
│   └── lib/               # PSR-4 FrontPress\
│       ├── Bootstrap.php
│       ├── Config.php
│       ├── Env.php
│       ├── ContentRepository.php
│       ├── FrontMatter.php
│       ├── Index.php
│       ├── Content.php
│       ├── MarkdownEmbeds.php      # YouTube URL → iframe expansion
│       ├── PathResolver.php
│       ├── Fs.php
│       ├── FilesystemUtils.php
│       ├── TemplateRenderer.php
│       ├── template_helpers.php
│       ├── ThemeService.php
│       ├── ThemeAssets.php         # SCSS compile + asset symlink/copy
│       ├── ThemeFiles.php
│       ├── ThemeArchiver.php
│       ├── ScssCompiler.php
│       ├── MediaService.php
│       ├── ThumbnailGenerator.php
│       ├── ImageAnnotator.php
│       ├── BackupService.php
│       ├── BackupRestorer.php
│       ├── Updater.php             # in-place self-update
│       ├── UnsplashHttp.php        # Unsplash integration HTTP layer
│       ├── UnsplashImporter.php
│       ├── Mailer.php
│       ├── SmtpTransport.php
│       ├── RateLimiter.php
│       ├── Trash.php
│       ├── AuditLog.php
│       ├── CacheService.php
│       ├── Seo.php
│       ├── Url.php
│       ├── Vite.php
│       └── Api/                    # REST controllers
│           ├── Router.php
│           ├── ServiceFactory.php
│           ├── AuthController.php
│           ├── PagesController.php
│           ├── PagesIoController.php
│           ├── MediaController.php
│           ├── SettingsController.php
│           ├── ThemesController.php
│           ├── EmailController.php
│           ├── BackupController.php
│           ├── CacheController.php
│           ├── UpdateController.php
│           ├── SearchController.php
│           ├── AuditController.php
│           └── UnsplashController.php
├── site/                  # USER DATA — never replaced by updater
│   ├── config.json        # forms, taxonomies, SEO, email, active_theme, uploads, integrations
│   ├── content/           # Markdown files + per-post media folders
│   ├── uploads/           # global media library
│   ├── themes/<name>/     # themes (templates/, assets/, theme.json, optional scss/)
│   └── cache/
│       ├── index.json     # sorted post index — rebuilt on file change
│       ├── twig/          # compiled Twig templates
│       └── rate-limit.json
└── src/                   # React admin SOURCE (Vite project)
    └── package.json

PSR-4 namespace: FrontPress\ → cms/lib/.

Request lifecycle (public site)

1. index.php boots — bootstrap.php loads autoload, config, $GLOBALS.
2. Special routes handled inline in index.php:
   • /uploads/* — image + video serve with realpath containment check.
   • /robots.txt, /sitemap.xml — generated on demand.
   • Form-folder block — every forms.<name> folder is 404'd to keep submissions private.
   • POST /submit/<form> — Mailer + ContentRepository save submission + send email.
3. Otherwise → FrontPress\Router::dispatch().
4. Router resolves /, /:folder, /:folder/:slug, /tag/:term, /category/:term.
5. Index::get() returns the sorted post list (date desc).
6. Content::render() returns HTML for a single post (Markdown → HTML with front matter; standalone YouTube URLs are converted to iframes by MarkdownEmbeds).
7. TemplateRenderer picks the template (front-matter template: first, then folder convention, then default).

Request lifecycle (admin)

1. admin.php checks session via AuthController::ensureSession().
2. If unauthed and not a login request → serve login page from the React bundle.
3. Otherwise → serve the React SPA from admin/.
4. SPA hits /admin/api/* → cms/lib/Api/Router.php dispatches to a controller via ServiceFactory.
5. Every mutating endpoint requires a CSRF token (X-CSRF-Token header). Read-only endpoints don't.

Configuration

Two layers:

File	Contents	Replaced on update?
config.php	FPS_ADMIN_USER, FPS_ADMIN_PASS_HASH, FPS_APP_ENV, optional integration fallbacks (FPS_UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY)	No — kept across updates
site/config.json	site name, base URL, active theme, taxonomies, forms, SEO, email (non-secret), upload limits, integration keys	No — under site/

Config::all() returns merged config. Admin's Settings screen writes back to site/config.json via SettingsController.

Env constants honoured: FPS_ADMIN_USER, FPS_ADMIN_PASS_HASH, FPS_APP_ENV (dev/prod), FPS_APP_DEBUG, FPS_SESSION_IDLE_SECONDS, FPS_UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY.

Content model

Files in site/content/<folder>/<slug>.md with YAML front matter + Markdown body.

---
title: My post
date: 2026-05-22
draft: false
tags: [news, release]
template: post            # optional, override default
excerpt: …                # optional, auto-derived if omitted
---

• <folder> segment maps directly to the URL: site/content/blog/foo.md → /blog/foo.
• A _index.md inside a folder is the archive intro; everything else is a post in that folder.
• Per-post media lives in a same-name sibling folder: site/content/blog/foo/image.jpg.
• Sort: date desc, null dates last (see Index.php). The order: front-matter field is not consulted by the sort; archive.twig groups consecutive entries with the same section: value.

Submissions: forms.<name> config drops a draft .md per submit at site/content/<name>/<timestamp>-<rand>.md. Folder is 404'd publicly.

Template helpers (registered as Twig functions and global PHP fns)

All defined in cms/lib/template_helpers.php, registered in cms/lib/TemplateRenderer.php:

Helper	Purpose
e($s)	HTML escape
asset_url($path)	Theme asset URL, busted by mtime
slug_url($term)	Taxonomy URL builder
paginate($current, $total, $base)	Configurable pagination markup
inspect($val)	var_dump in <pre> for debugging
seo_head($page)	OG/Twitter/JSON-LD meta tags
contact_form($formName='contact', $opts=[])	Renders a form spec into HTML
partial($name, $vars=[])	Includes a Twig partial with vars

Twig globals: config (array of site/config.json), query (mirror of $_GET).

Global PHP helpers (in bootstrap.php)

These live in the global namespace — themes call them directly from PHP templates / partials. NOT available in Twig (the partial layer is how Twig templates reach them).

Function	Purpose
posts($args = [])	Query the content index. Args: folder, filter, orderby, order, limit, offset. Returns the same shape as posts in archive.twig. Backed by Index::filter() / Index::get().
render($template, $vars = [])	Render a theme template by name (no extension). PHP wins if both .php and .twig exist with the same name.

For theme authors, see the frontpress-theme skill for the PHP-partial pattern (_<name>.php) that's used to call posts() from Twig themes.

REST API surface

Routes prefixed /admin/api/. All require session unless noted. Mutations require X-CSRF-Token.

Route	Controller
POST /auth/login, POST /auth/logout	AuthController
GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /pages	PagesController + PagesIoController
GET/POST/DELETE /media	MediaController
GET/PUT /settings	SettingsController
GET /themes, POST /themes/activate, POST /themes/upload, GET /themes/export	ThemesController
POST /email/test	EmailController
GET/POST /backup, POST /backup/restore	BackupController
POST /cache/clear	CacheController
GET /update, POST /update, POST /update/check, POST /update/migrate	UpdateController
GET /search	SearchController
GET /audit	AuditController
GET/PUT/DELETE /unsplash/key, GET /unsplash/search, POST /unsplash/pick	UnsplashController
POST /submit/<form> (public, no session)	Handled in index.php, not the API router

Upload allowlist

MediaService::ALLOWED_EXTS — what the admin uploader accepts:

jpg, jpeg, png, gif, webp, svg, pdf, zip

index.php — what /uploads/* will serve (broader, because video files can be SFTP'd in):

jpe?g, png, gif, webp, svg, avif, mp4, webm, mov, m4v, ogv, ogg

To allow a new uploaded type, edit ALLOWED_EXTS + MIME_MAP in MediaService.php (and update the serve regex in index.php if the type isn't already served).

Update flow

cms/lib/Updater.php drives in-place updates:

1. Polls api.github.com for latest release tag in krstivoja/frontpress-studio.
2. Downloads zip → site/cache/updates/.
3. Verifies SHA-256 against the release manifest.
4. Computes the file list to replace: everything under cms/, admin/, plus root entry-point PHP — never site/ or config.php.
5. Atomic rename-aside-then-rename per file. Rollback on partial failure.
6. After extraction: opcache_invalidate per PHP file written + opcache_reset at the end (added in 0.3.8 — fixes "Class not found" 500s on hosts with stale opcache).
7. cms/VERSION is written LAST so a half-applied update keeps the old version string.
8. Twig + page cache cleared.

Backup flow

cms/lib/BackupService.php:

• Full — zips cms/ + site/ + entry-points (excluding cache).
• Content — site/content/ + site/uploads/ + site/config.json.
• Restore via BackupRestorer.php: extract to .restore-bak-<ts> staging, atomic swap, rollback on failure.

Theme service contract

cms/lib/ThemeService.php resolves the active theme:

1. site/config.json.active_theme → site/themes/<name>/.
2. Theme must have theme.json, templates/_layout.twig, and either assets/style.css or compiled SCSS output.
3. Twig loader is bound to the active theme's templates/ dir; falls back to blank if missing.
4. engine: twig (default) or engine: php in theme.json flips which renderer runs (blank-php/ ships as the PHP reference).

For theme authoring details, see the frontpress-theme skill.

Integrations (per-install plus framework default)

UnsplashController::accessKey() resolves the active key in this order:

1. site/config.json → integrations.unsplash.access_key (Settings → Integrations UI)
2. FPS_UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY in config.php (per-server fallback)
3. DEFAULT_ACCESS_KEY bundled with the framework (works out of the box; shared rate limit + TOS scope)

keyStatus() returns source: 'own' | 'config_php' | 'default' | 'none' so the Settings UI can render the right state.

Release process

Bump cms/VERSION → tag → GitHub Actions builds frontpress-studio-<version>.zip (composer install no-dev with --optimize-autoloader BUT NOT --classmap-authoritative — PSR-4 fallback fixes the in-admin-update opcache class). Publish release. The Updater finds it by tag.

Branching: main is what releases come from. No long-lived feature branches.

Common gotchas

1. Sort by date desc — Index.php uses date only. order: front-matter is ignored. To re-order, change dates or patch the uasort.
2. Twig autoescape is HTML — pipe rendered HTML through |raw. Helpers registered with is_safe: html already mark output safe.
3. config.php is preserved across updates — never put runtime mutable state there.
4. site/ is never touched by Updater — but IS included in Full backups.
5. CSRF — every mutating REST call needs X-CSRF-Token. The React admin reads it from a meta tag injected by admin.php.
6. Form folder is publicly 404'd — /contact/* is blocked even though /contact (the page) is allowed. Keep that asymmetry in mind when adding new forms.
7. SVG uploads — sanitised on upload AND served with Content-Security-Policy: sandbox. Don't relax either side.
8. File size budget — project rule: no source file in src/ or cms/lib/ over 300 lines. Split before you hit it. See repo CLAUDE.md for the canonical splits.
9. Don't ship secrets in source — Unsplash Access Key is the one exception (DEFAULT_ACCESS_KEY const), and it's documented as a known trade-off. Anything else with a quota or TOS scope must go through Settings → Integrations or config.php.

File size rule (from project CLAUDE.md)

Hard cap of 300 lines on .js, .jsx, .php under src/ and cms/lib/. Excludes generated admin/assets/, vendor code, theme templates.

When splitting:

• React screens → extract sidebars/panels + pull network into src/lib/use*.js hooks.
• Backend services → orthogonal helpers (FilesystemUtils, BackupRestorer, ThumbnailGenerator).
• Pure helpers → flat modules in src/lib/ or cms/lib/, not private static methods on big classes.

Related skill

For theme authoring / content / front-matter / Twig template work, load the frontpress-theme skill instead.