totalcms

name	totalcms
description	Use when building, editing, or managing a Total CMS (T3) site — creating Site Builder pages, working with collections, schemas, or objects, using the tcms CLI, or setting up the frontend/Vite pipeline. Covers the local build workflow end to end.

Building a Total CMS (T3) site

This project is a website built on Total CMS, a flat-file PHP CMS. There is no database — all content is JSON under tcms-data/. The CMS core is installed by Composer into vendor/totalcms/cms/; never edit vendor/ (it is replaced on update). Configure via config/tcms.php (deep-merged — specify only keys you change).

The CLI is vendor/bin/tcms. Most commands accept --json for machine-readable output — prefer it when scripting. Run vendor/bin/tcms list to see everything.

Where to look things up

You do not need to memorize field options or Twig signatures — they ship on disk:

• On-disk docs (always present): vendor/totalcms/cms/resources/docs/<section>/ (menu.php is the table of contents, search-index.json a prebuilt index). Sections include site-builder/, collections/, schemas/, fields/, twig/, forms/, apis/, extensions/, operations/. Grep or read these for the long tail.
• MCP docs server (optional accelerator): if mcp.totalcms.co is connected, use docs_search, docs_twig_function, docs_field_type, docs_cli_command, etc. It is faster but not required — the on-disk docs are authoritative.

Prefer looking things up over guessing; training data is often stale on exact signatures.

The build loop: add a page to the site

1. See what already routes: vendor/bin/tcms builder:routes lists every page the router serves and flags conflicts. vendor/bin/tcms builder:routes --json to script.
2. If Site Builder isn't set up yet, scaffold a starter: vendor/bin/tcms builder:init <starter> where <starter> is business, blog, portfolio, or minimal. Add --frontend to also install the Vite pipeline. This copies templates, ensures the builder-pages collection, and seeds demo pages.
3. Edit templates on the filesystem under tcms-data/builder/{layouts,pages,partials,macros}/*.twig. Twig global is cms; builder helpers are cms.builder.nav(), cms.builder.url(id, params), cms.builder.css/js/asset(). See references/site-builder.md.
4. Add a page record. A page is an object in the builder-pages collection. There is no object:create CLI command — create content one of three ways:
   • the admin UI (Site Builder → Pages), or
   • vendor/bin/tcms collection:import builder-pages <file.json> (see references/cli.md), or
   • vendor/bin/tcms jumpstart:import <file> for bulk seeding. Key builder-pages fields: route, template, title, draft, data (free-form JSON exposed as page.data.*). Full list in references/site-builder.md.
5. Preview: serve public/ (php -S localhost:8080 -t public) and visit the page's route. Clear caches after template changes if needed: vendor/bin/tcms cache:clear.

Reference files (read on demand)

When you are…	Read
running any tcms command / scripting with --json	references/cli.md
editing builder templates, routes, or page records	references/site-builder.md
setting up or building frontend assets	references/frontend.md
modeling data — collections, schemas, objects	references/data-model.md
needing an exact field option / Twig signature	vendor/totalcms/cms/resources/docs/<section>/ (or MCP)