AlchemyCMS
Alchemy is an open source CMS engine written in Ruby on Rails.
Read more about Alchemy on the website and in the guidelines.
CAUTION: This main branch is a development branch that can contain bugs. For productive environments you should use the current Ruby gem version, or the latest stable branch (7.0-stable).
๐ Main sponsor
โ Features
- Flexible templating that separates content from markup
- A rich RESTful API
- Intuitive admin interface with live preview
- Multi language and multi domain
- Page versioning
- SEO friendly urls
- User Access Control
- Build in contact form mailer
- Attachments and downloads
- On-the-fly image cropping and resizing
- Extendable via Rails engines
- Integrates into existing Rails Apps
- Resourceful Rails admin
- Flexible caching
- Hostable on any Server that supports Ruby on Rails, a SQL Database and ImageMagick
๐ฎ Demo
Visit the existing demo at https://alchemy-demo.fly.dev/
- Login:
demo
- Password:
demo123
๐ Rails Version
This version of AlchemyCMS runs with Rails 7.0 and 7.1
- For a Rails 6.1 compatible version use the
7.0-stable
branch. - For a Rails 6.0 compatible version use the
6.1-stable
branch. - For a Rails 5.2 compatible version use the
5.3-stable
branch. - For a Rails 5.0 or 5.1 compatible version use the
4.5-stable
branch. - For a Rails 4.2 compatible version use the
3.6-stable
branch. - For a Rails 4.0/4.1 compatible version use the
3.1-stable
branch. - For a Rails 3.2 compatible version use the
2.8-stable
branch. - For a Rails 3.1 compatible version use the
2.1-stable
branch. - For a Rails 3.0 compatible version use the
2.0-stable
branch. - For a Rails 2.3 compatible version use the
1.6-stable
branch.
๐ Ruby Version
Alchemy runs with Ruby >= 2.5.0.
For a Ruby 2.4 compatible version use the 5.2-stable
branch.
For a Ruby 2.2 compatible version use the 4.1-stable
branch.
For a Ruby 2.1 compatible version use the 3.6-stable
branch.
For a Ruby 2.0.0 compatible version use the 3.2-stable
branch.
For a Ruby 1.9.3 compatible version use the 3.1-stable
branch.
For a Ruby 1.8.7 compatible version use the 2.3-stable
branch.
โจ๏ธ Installation
Stand Alone Installation
If you do not have a Rails project yet or just want to check out Alchemy, then use this Rails template.
Make sure you have Rails installed first:
$ gem install rails
Then create a new Rails project with:
$ rails new -m https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlchemyCMS/rails-templates/master/all.rb <MY-PROJECT-NAME>
and follow the on screen instructions.
Manual Installation
If you want to manually install Alchemy into your Rails project follow these steps.
Add the Alchemy gem:
Put Alchemy into your Gemfile
with:
$ bundle add alchemy_cms
Set the authentication user
Now you have to decide, if you want to use your own user model or if you want to use the Devise based user model that Alchemy provides and was extracted into its own gem.
Use Alchemy user
If you don't have your own user class, you can use the Alchemy user model. Just add the following gem into your Gemfile
:
$ bundle add alchemy-devise
Then run the alchemy-devise
installer:
$ bin/rails g alchemy:devise:install
Use your User model
In order to use your own user model you need to tell Alchemy about it.
The best practice is to use an initializer:
# config/initializers/alchemy.rb
Alchemy.user_class_name = 'YourUserClass' # Defaults to 'User'
Alchemy.current_user_method = 'current_admin_user' # Defaults to 'current_user'
Alchemy.signup_path = '/your/signup/path' # Defaults to '/signup'
Alchemy.login_path = '/your/login/path' # Defaults to '/login'
Alchemy.logout_path = '/your/logout/path' # Defaults to '/logout'
Alchemy.logout_method = 'http_verb_for_logout' # Defaults to 'delete'
Alchemy. = '/some/public/page' # Defaults to '/'
The only thing Alchemy needs to know from your user class is the alchemy_roles
method.
This method has to return an Array
(or ActiveRecord::Relation
) with at least one of the following roles: member
, author
, editor
, admin
.
Example
# app/models/user.rb
def alchemy_roles
if admin?
%w(admin)
end
end
Please follow this guide for further instructions on how to customize your user class even more.
4. Install Alchemy into your app:
After you set the user model you need to run the Alchemy install task:
$ bin/rails alchemy:install
Now everything should be set up and you should be able to visit the Alchemy Dashboard at:
*) Use your custom path if you mounted Alchemy at something else then '/'
๐ Customization
Alchemy has very flexible ways to organize and manage content. Please be sure to read the introduction guide in order to understand the basic idea of how Alchemy works.
Custom Controllers
Beginning with Alchemy 3.1 we do not patch the ApplicationController
anymore. If you have controllers that loads Alchemy content or uses Alchemy helpers in the views (i.e. render_menu
or render_elements
) you can either inherit from Alchemy::BaseController
or you include Alchemy::ControllerActions
in your controller (that's the recommended way).
Custom admin interface routing
By default, Alchemy Dashboard is accessible at http://example.com/admin. You can change this by setting Alchemy.admin_path
and Alchemy.admin_constraints
.
For example, these settings:
# config/initializers/alchemy.rb
Alchemy.admin_path = 'backend'
Alchemy.admin_constraints = {subdomain: 'hidden'}
will move the dashboard to http://hidden.example.com/backend.
Picture caching
Alchemy uses the Dragonfly gem to render pictures on-the-fly.
To make this as performant as possible the rendered picture gets stored into public/pictures
so the web server can pick up the file and serve it without hitting the Rails process at all.
This may or may not what you want. Especially for multi server setups you eventually want to use something like S3.
Please follow the guidelines about picture caching on the Dragonfly homepage for further instructions:
http://markevans.github.io/dragonfly/cache
We also provide an extension for Cloudinary
๐ Localization
Alchemy ships with one default English translation for the admin interface. If you want to use the admin interface in other languages please have a look at the alchemy_i18n
project.
โจ Upgrading
We, the Alchemy team, take upgrades very seriously and we try to make them as smooth as possible. Therefore we have build an upgrade task, that tries to automate the upgrade procedure as much as possible.
That's why after the Alchemy gem has been updated, with explicit call to:
$ bundle update alchemy_cms
you should always run the upgrader:
$ bin/rake alchemy:upgrade
Alchemy will print out useful information after running the automated tasks that help a smooth upgrade path. So please take your time and read them.
Always be sure to keep an eye on the config/alchemy/config.yml.defaults
file and update your config/alchemy/config.yml
accordingly.
Also, git diff
is your friend.
Customize the upgrade preparation
The Alchemy upgrader comes prepared with several rake tasks in a specific order. This is sometimes not what you want or could even break upgrades. In order to customize the upgrade preparation process you can instead run each of the tasks on their own.
$ bin/rake alchemy:install:migrations
$ bin/rake db:migrate
$ bin/rake alchemy:db:seed
$ bin/rake alchemy:upgrade:config
$ bin/rake alchemy:upgrade:run
WARNING: This is only recommended, if you have problems with the default rake alchemy:upgrade
task and need to
repair your data in between. The upgrader depends on these upgrade tasks running in this specific order, otherwise
we can't ensure smooth upgrades for you.
Run an individual upgrade
You can also run an individual upgrade on its own:
$ bin/rake -T alchemy:upgrade
provides you with a list of each upgrade you can run individually.
Example
$ bin/rake alchemy:upgrade:4.1
runs only the Alchemy 4.1 upgrade
๐ Deployment
Alchemy has an official Capistrano extension which takes care of everything you need to deploy an Alchemy site.
Please use capistrano-alchemy, if you want to deploy with Capistrano.
Without Capistrano
If you don't use Capistrano you have to make sure that the uploads
, tmp/cache/assets
, public/assets
and public/pictures
folders get shared between deployments, otherwise you will loose data. No, not really, but you know, just keep them in sync.
๐ง Testing
If you want to contribute to Alchemy (and we encourage you to do so) we have a strong test suite that helps you to not break anything.
Preparation
First of all you need to clone your fork to your local development machine. Then you need to install the dependencies with bundler.
$ bin/setup
To prepare the tests of your Alchemy fork please make sure to run the preparation task:
$ bundle exec rake alchemy:spec:prepare
to set up the database for testing.
Run your tests with:
$ bin/rspec
Alternatively you can just run*:
$ bundle exec rake
*) This default task executes the database preparations and runs all defined test cases.
Start the dummy app
You can even start the dummy app and use it to manually test your changes with:
$ bin/start
๐ฆ Releasing
๐ค Automated (recommended)
There is a Rake task that helps you to release a new version of Alchemy.
$ bundle exec rake alchemy:release
[!NOTE] This will release a new patch level
If you want to release a new minor or major version you can do so by setting the VERSION
environment variable accordingly.
$ bundle exec rake alchemy:release VERSION=X.Y.Z
๐ท๐ฝโโ๏ธ Manual
If something goes wrong with the automated release task you can still release a new version manually.
1. Bump version
Bump the version number in lib/alchemy/version.rb
.
2. Update the changelog
$ export GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN=...
$ PREVIOUS_VERSION=4.1.0 bundle exec rake alchemy:changelog:update
3. Commit version bump
$ git commit -am "Bump version to vX.Y.Z"
4. Release a new version
This task will publish the ruby gem. It also tags the latest commit.
$ bundle exec rake release
โGetting Help
- Read the guidelines: https://guides.alchemy-cms.com.
- Read the documentation: https://www.rubydoc.info/github/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms
- If you think you found a bug please use the issue tracker on Github.
- For questions about general usage please use Stack Overflow or the Slack.
- New features should be discussed on our Trello Board.
PLEASE don't use the Github issues for feature requests. If you want to contribute to Alchemy please read the contribution guidelines before doing so.
๐ Resources
- Homepage: https://alchemy-cms.com
- Live-Demo: https://demo.alchemy-cms.com (user: demo, password: demo123)
- API Documentation: https://www.rubydoc.info/github/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms
- Issue-Tracker: https://github.com/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms/issues
- Sourcecode: https://github.com/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms
- Slack: https://alchemy-cms.slack.com
- Mastodon: https://ruby.social/@alchemy_cms
โ๏ธ Authors
- Thomas von Deyen: https://github.com/tvdeyen
- Robin Bรถning: https://github.com/robinboening
- Marc Schettke: https://github.com/masche842
- Hendrik Mans: https://github.com/hmans
- Carsten Fregin: https://github.com/cfregin
๐ Contributors
This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].
๐ต Backers
Thank you to all our backers! ๐ [Become a backer]
๐ฐ Sponsors
Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Become a sponsor]
๐ License
๐ข Spread the love
If you like Alchemy, please help us to spread the word about Alchemy and star this repo on GitHub, upvote it on The Ruby Toolbox, mention us on Twitter.
That will help us to keep Alchemy awesome.
Thank you!