Features
Everything Total CMS can do.
A complete tour of the toolbox — from content modeling and the built-in MCP server that lets AI agents work with your real content, to the white-label admin, APIs, and automation. For a per-edition breakdown, see the feature matrix.
Content Modeling
18 built-in content types
Blog posts, galleries, images, videos, podcasts, and more — ready out of the box. Add a collection and start editing.
Custom schemas Pro
Define exactly the fields your project needs. The admin builds its editing interface around your schema automatically.
36 admin field types
Rich text, images, dates, colors, toggles, selects, ratings, addresses — every field renders a purpose-built editor.
Deck repeatable sections Pro
Repeatable, reorderable content sections with nested cards — including image and file uploads inside each card.
Singleton collections
For content that only ever has one of it — a homepage, an about page, global settings. One record, edited in place, no list to navigate.
Localized & secret fields
Store translations alongside the original, and keep API tokens and keys in masked fields that never render in a template by accident.
AI-Native
Built-in MCP server
Not a bolt-on, not an extension — every Total CMS 3.5 site ships an MCP server. Agents read your real schemas and real content instead of guessing at them.
Works with your agent
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code. Connect once over MCP and scaffold a complete site in a session — no plugin to install on either end.
Agents that write Pro
Let an agent draft a post, fix a field, or bulk-update a collection. Pro connects agents to your private content; Standard exposes only what you publish publicly.
Access you control Pro
OAuth 2.1 with per-user consent and group-scoped permissions. An agent sees exactly what the person who authorised it can see — revocable, logged, and expiring.
AI-ready documentation
The Total CMS docs are served over MCP too, so your agent answers from current documentation rather than whatever it half-remembers from training.
Built for deep research
Standard search and fetch tools plus an llms.txt manifest, so ChatGPT and deep-research agents can cite your site accurately.
Admin Experience
A focused editor, not a page builder
Every collection gets a clean, purpose-built editing form. Clients edit content — they never touch structure or design.
Access Groups & permissions
Control which users see which collections, and which fields they can edit. Give everyone exactly the access they need.
White-label admin
Your logo, your brand. Standard white-labels the admin; Pro removes Total CMS branding from every surface.
Passkeys & phone-friendly
Passwordless passkey login, and an admin that works end-to-end on a phone. Editing content from the couch is a feature.
Speaks seven languages
The admin ships in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and Polish — so a client edits in their own language, not yours.
Reports & relationship maps
Report across any collection, and visualise how collections and objects link together as a diagram when a content model gets big enough to lose track of.
Guided setup
A first-run wizard walks through environment, data location, your admin account, licensing, and server rules — then logs you straight in.
Images & Media
ImageWorks processing
Automatic server-side resizing and processing with smart caching. Upload once, request any size from your templates.
Watermarking
Watermark an image with a logo, text, or both — custom fonts supported, applied on the server, not in someone's photo editor.
Barcodes & QR codes
Generate QR codes and barcodes straight from your templates — product labels, tickets, menus, event passes, all rendered on the fly.
Depot file management
A central library for files and media, reusable across collections. Upload once, reference everywhere.
Templates & Design
Twig templating
Full Twig 3 with custom Total CMS functions, filters, and content grids. Your design stays in your hands, in your files.
Playground
Prototype and test Twig templates against your real content, right in the admin — with autosave.
Template Designer
Define a template inline in your page markup and sync it to the server — edit the design where you can see it, without hunting for the right file.
Load More & fragment caching
Progressive pagination without writing JavaScript, and a {% cache %} tag to cache the expensive parts of a page.
RSS & sitemap builders
Generate RSS feeds and XML sitemaps from any collection with built-in utilities.
Site Builder
No build step, ever
Pages are content, routed at request time. Add one in the admin and it is live — nothing to regenerate, nothing to redeploy, no static build to wait on.
Start from a starter
Scaffold a whole site in one command with a bundled starter — minimal, blog, business, or portfolio — templates and demo content seeded and ready to edit.
Routes with placeholders
Give a page a route like /blog/{id} and every object in the collection gets its own clean URL. Per-page redirects and status codes included.
Navigation that builds itself
Menus and links come from your pages, so a renamed route never leaves a dead link behind. Asset helpers add cache-busting automatically.
Pages you can gate
Put any page behind an access group, keep it as a draft until it is ready, or attach your own middleware — per page, from the admin.
Modern frontend, optional
Want a build pipeline? Scaffold a Vite setup for Sass and JavaScript. Don't want one? Plain CSS and Twig work exactly as well.
Data & Portability
Flat-file storage
Content lives in JSON files on your server. No database to provision, tune, back up, or corrupt — and it all travels with you.
JumpStart export/import
Export an entire site's content to a single file and import it anywhere — with streaming support for large datasets.
Import from anywhere
Migrate from WordPress, Total CMS 1, Alloy, CSV, JSON, or RSS with built-in importers that run as background jobs.
Push & pull sync
Move content between local and production with a single CLI command. Build locally, push when ready.
APIs & Automation
REST API
A full REST API for every collection, in every edition. Pro adds API keys, so external services and headless front ends can read and write from anywhere.
PHP API
Query collections and render content from any PHP code — the same API the admin itself is built on.
Automations Pro
Run your own code on a schedule, from a webhook, or whenever content changes — with a job queue, run history, and guard rails.
Data Views Pro
Saved, pre-computed queries across collections — filtered, sorted, and cached, ready to query from templates, the API, or an agent.
Webhooks Pro
Notify external services when content changes — deploys, rebuilds, notifications, anything with a URL.
CLI automation
The tcms command line manages collections, objects, schemas, imports, updates, and sync — scriptable, with JSON output.
Platform & Performance
Runs on any PHP host
PHP 8.2+ and a folder — that's the whole requirement. Install via Composer or upload a zip. No containers, no build pipeline.
Extensions
Extend the CMS with third-party extensions, each sandboxed behind granular, per-capability permissions you control.
Multi-backend caching
APCu, Redis, Memcached, or filesystem caching — auto-detected, with one-click cache clearing for editors.
In-admin updates
Check, apply, and roll back updates from the admin or CLI. You decide when — nothing updates behind your back.
Want to see which features come with each edition? Compare the full feature matrix →
Weighing Total CMS against another tool? See our honest head-to-head comparisons →
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