modern-cms

A self-hosted, drag-and-drop website CMS: a Next.js (App Router) front end, an Express + Prisma API, your choice of PostgreSQL or MySQL, and pluggable file storage (AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, or Cloudinary). Install it with one command — an interactive wizard scaffolds a complete, working project and writes its .env files for you.

• npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/modern-cms
• Source: https://github.com/isahaq1/Modern-CMS
• Issues: https://github.com/isahaq1/Modern-CMS/issues

Features

• Visual page builder — drag-and-drop containers, a true 2D grid layout (with per-column/row resize), 30+ content blocks (hero, testimonials, pricing tables, video, team, timeline, before/after, and more), responsive breakpoint overrides (desktop/tablet/mobile), GSAP-powered entrance animations, and dark mode.
• Content model — pages with draft/publish/scheduled-publish states, page revisions with restore, page templates, collections (blog/news/events/etc.) with locale support, reusable saved blocks, global header/footer sections.
• Internationalization — per-page locale + translation groups, RTL layout support, a language switcher block.
• SEO built in — sitemap.xml, robots.txt, JSON-LD (WebPage/Article/BreadcrumbList/FAQPage), redirects, per-page meta/OG tags.
• Auth & governance — role-based access (Admin / Editor / Author, with per-resource ownership for Authors), an audit log of every mutating admin action.
• Forms & search — a contact-form block with submission storage and an optional webhook, full-text search (Postgres tsvector ranking) across pages and collection items.
• Backup — export/import a single page or the whole site as JSON.
• Analytics — GA4, Plausible, or a custom script snippet, configured from the admin theme settings.

Requirements

• Node.js 18 or newer
• A PostgreSQL or MySQL server (local, Docker, or a managed service)
• Credentials for one file-storage provider: AWS S3 (or any S3-compatible service — MinIO, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces...), Azure Blob Storage, or Cloudinary

Installation

npx (no install — always runs the latest version):

npx modern-cms

npm (global install):

npm install -g modern-cms
modern-cms

yarn:

# Yarn Classic (v1)
yarn global add modern-cms
modern-cms

# Yarn Berry (v2+)
yarn dlx modern-cms

What the installer asks

| Step | Prompt | Notes | |---|---|---| | 1 | Project directory | Must be empty or not yet exist | | 2 | Database engine | PostgreSQL or MySQL | | 3 | Database host / port / name / username / password | Builds DATABASE_URL and rewrites the Prisma schema's datasource for you | | 4 | Web app port / API port | Defaults 3000 / 4000 | | 5 | Storage provider | AWS S3 (or S3-compatible) / Azure Blob Storage / Cloudinary | | 6 | Provider credentials | Endpoint/keys/bucket for S3, connection string/container for Azure, cloud name/API key/secret for Cloudinary | | 7 | Public site URL / API URL | Defaults follow whatever ports you picked | | 8 | Admin email / password | Leave the password blank to auto-generate one (printed once, at the end) |

The installer only writes files — it never runs npm install, touches your database, or starts anything. It prints the exact next commands, so nothing happens on your machine without you seeing it first.

After the wizard finishes

cd <your-project-dir>
npm install

# PostgreSQL:
npm run db:migrate

# MySQL (the bundled migration history is Postgres-specific SQL, so a fresh
# MySQL install uses schema-push instead of the migration history):
npx prisma generate --schema apps/api/prisma/schema.prisma
npx prisma db push --schema apps/api/prisma/schema.prisma

npm run db:seed
npm run dev

Then open the web app at the URL you chose (default http://localhost:3000) and log in at /admin with the admin email/password from the wizard.

Prefer yarn for the scaffolded project too? yarn install works fine, and dev/build/db:migrate/db:seed all run correctly. A stray duplicate @types/express (pulled in by @types/multer's unpinned "*" dependency range) used to break tsc/npm run build under both npm and yarn — the generated package.json now pins it via overrides (npm) and resolutions (yarn), so a fresh install with either tool is clean.

Logged in with the wrong password? The admin user is only created the first time db:seed runs — editing .env afterward doesn't retroactively change it. Run npm run db:reset-admin && npm run db:seed to delete and recreate it from the current .env values.

Project layout

The scaffolded project is an npm-workspaces monorepo:

your-project/
  apps/
    web/      # Next.js app — public site + /admin builder UI
    api/      # Express + Prisma API
  packages/
    shared/   # Zod schemas, the component registry, and tree helpers shared by both apps
  docker-compose.yml   # optional local Postgres + MinIO for dev

Configuration reference

Everything the installer writes lives in apps/api/.env and apps/web/.env.local. The full list of variables (and what each one does) is documented in .env.example at the root of the scaffolded project.

Contributing / issues

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome — please open an issue at https://github.com/isahaq1/Modern-CMS/issues.

Author

Md Isahaq Email: [email protected] Phone: +880 1852376598

License

MIT