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Hi, I want to develop a CMS that I can use when I make websites. Want to simultaneously post it online so that people can download it and develop plugins and themes for this. Would like to have it as user friendly as other CMS such as Wordpress, Joomla, Dupal etc. Are there any good tutorials for this?

Waleed Ahmed

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A practical learning path that builds real skill without biting off the whole world at once. As suggested, start by studying and extending an existing CMS to see common patterns; as warned, a full product-ready CMS is a large project. For a learning project (as said), break the work into small, testable milestones and iterate.

  • Minimum viable learning CMS: routing/front controller, a simple template layer, and one content type stored in a flat file or single DB table.
  • Authentication and roles: login, session handling, and role checks; use PHP password_hash or a modern equivalent for storing passwords.
  • Admin UI and media: CRUD forms, media upload with file-type checks and storage rules.
  • Theming: separate templates from logic so a theme can override views safely and use output escaping.
  • Plugin API: implement a hook/event registry (actions + filters), plugin bootstrap and uninstall hooks, and capability checks before exposing core functions.
  • Data migrations and versioning: simple migration scripts, semantic releases, and a clear upgrade path.
  • Security and testing: prepared statements, CSRF tokens, strict output escaping, input validation, and unit/integration tests. Follow OWASP guidance.
  • Packaging and docs: put the code in a VCS repo, include README, CONTRIBUTING, and an example plugin + theme.

Design notes and cautions: expose a small, stable public API to plugins rather than letting them call internal functions. Autoloading and a service container make testing and isolation easier. Never eval untrusted code; limit plugin filesystem access and document the upgrade path so plugins survive schema changes.

Treat the first version as a learning lab, not a product. Iterate, add tests, and publish clear developer docs and example extensions to attract plugin/theme contributors.

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Member Avatar for Dani

If following an existing tutorial was as easy as setting up an existing CMS system such as WordPress, then WordPress wouldn't be that popular!! Unless you're doing it just as a learning project, don't just reinvent the wheel for the sake of reinventing the wheel.

I'm really not sure what your expertise level is, but the best place to start would be to use something like Wordpress, and get to know its code backwards and forwards. Start doing small plugins for it, and over time, bigger and bigger ones to really customize it for your own needs. Over time, you'll figure out where its inadequacies are and what can't be fixed through plugins and hacks. At that point, you'll have a really good understanding of not only how to create a CMS from scratch, but also what to do to make something better than what's already out there.

Member Avatar for GliderPilot

If following an existing tutorial was as easy as setting up an existing CMS system such as WordPress, then WordPress wouldn't be that popular!! Unless you're doing it just as a learning project, don't just reinvent the wheel for the sake of reinventing the wheel.

+1

A fully functioning CMS, one which can be taken and installed on other's websites is not an easy undertaking and you won't really find a tutorial for this. It requires a very in depth knowledge of PHP so I'm guessing that if you're asking for a tutorial than you don't quiet have the skill level needed to undertake such a project. Start small and work upwards from there ;)

Member Avatar for eoop.org

This is only going to be for learning, i want to learn how to do this type of stuff so i can do huge projects later on.

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