Poster CMS 3 – Call for Papers

inStacks
21

A small development update on Poster CMS 3 :blush:

After thinking a lot about positioning, licensing, and the upgrade path, I decided to keep Poster CMS 3 as simple and frictionless as possible.

Current direction

  • Poster CMS 3 will be a full successor to Poster 2
  • Existing Poster 2 content/projects will continue to work without migration
  • The update is designed as an in-place upgrade
  • Poster CMS 3 will include:
    • dynamic includes/macros
    • an online Markdown editor for blog posts and include/macro files
    • PHP 8.5 compatibility
    • all existing Poster 2 functionality

The goal is that you can simply update existing projects and continue working normally — while gaining the new features immediately.

Licensing & Pricing

I also spent quite some time thinking about licensing.

At the moment, I plan to keep licensing very simple:

  • no per-domain licensing
  • no phoning home / activation servers
  • no subscriptions

Instead, Poster CMS 3 will most likely use a simple perpetual license with unlimited site usage.

Current planned pricing:

  • €99 one-time purchase for Poster CMS 3

I believe this fits the philosophy of Poster much better:
lightweight, developer-friendly, markdown-first, and easy to use without unnecessary licensing complexity.

Prerequisites

  • PHP 8.2 or higher
  • With this, RapidWeaver Classic 9.2.0 or higher

Philosophy

I do not want Poster CMS 3 to become a giant “super CMS”.

The focus remains:

  • simple markdown publishing
  • lightweight editable content
  • reusable includes/macros
  • flexibility for blogs, documentation, portfolios, and small client sites

Many thanks for all the ideas and feedback so far — they really helped shape the direction of Poster CMS 3 :+1:

4 Likes
22

Will it be Stacks only or do you plan also a Blocs 6 version?

23

Poster CMS 3 will be for now released on:

  • RW Classic 9.2/Stacks Plugin 5
  • Stacks 6 (when released)

For Blocs, you still have Volt CMS 1

24

Many of us stopped updating/upgrading RapidWeaver beyond v.8.9.3 or 8.9.4. Are we not going to be able to use Poster CMS 3?

25

The latest version of PHP supported by the RW8 preview server is PHP 8.1.
PHP 8.1 ended active support in Dec 2025.

If I on the one hand side support the old PHP 8.1 version, I am on the other side not able to be future proof and be fully compliant to PHP 8.5.

So the ones still on RW8 would have to wait for Stacks 6 for getting a never PHP preview server and with this be able to use Poster 3.

26

My published website is supported by PHP 8.4.20, though. And I could push that even higher in my cPanel. Would it be possible to work around RW 8’s outdated PHP support and still use Poster CMS3? Sorry for my ignorance…

27

If disabled preview would be fine for you, yes.

1 Like
28

Hi Jannis

If I read correctly my RW8.93 installation will need to be upgraded to RW Classic?

29

Let me do further tests with RW8, maybe I can find a workaround.

2 Likes
30

You will be able to create image galleries inside markdown editor with an image browser. No need for other stacks :+1:

I forgot to mention multi language sites will also be supported.

3 Likes
31

When is the release date?

33

The online markdown editor is already finished. I’m giving it some last shape.
Then packaging all together.
I hope next month.

4 Likes
34

I hope so too.

35

Will Poster CMS 3 have native support for avif and webp?

Will it also support fallback?

For example, including the AVIF format with a double fallback: first to the WebP format and, finally (but not necessarily), to the classic JPEG as a last resort for extremely outdated browsers.

36

Yes, webp is fully supported inside the markdown editor, image uploads, inbuilt gallery builder and updated lightbox.

Webp is supported in all browsers, so no fallback needed.

1 Like
37

I double checked the PHP versions again.

  • RW 8.9 supports PHP 7.4.21 for the inbuilt preview server only.
  • The first RW Classic version which supports PHP 8.1 in the preview server was RW 8.10. Afterwards, RW Classic got 9.x version numbers.

I am able to reduce the required PHP version to 8.1, which helps, if you still use an old RW Classic version like RW 9.1.1. But RW 8.9 is definitely too old to get the inbuilt preview server to work.

The only alternative is to use MAMP for local preview in this case. The workflow would be build a Poster 3 page in RW 8.9, export the project to a local folder, run MAMP server and open the page from the export folder.

1 Like