SynaptikCMS v1.3.1

[1.3.1] — 2026-07-19

Added

• Booking plugin: new "History" tab listing all past appointments (any status), separate from Requests, which now only shows upcoming ones.
• New Maintenance plugin: puts up a maintenance page for visitors (HTTP 503, custom message) while a logged-in admin keeps browsing the site normally.

Changed

• Plugin system: replaced the core-file-specific hooks used by the Maintenance and Redirects plugins (index.php calling mt_maybe_block() / rd_maybe_redirect() by name) with two generic hook points any plugin can use without ever touching a core file: early_request (fired right after functions.php loads, before routing or output — for blocking/intercepting the whole request) and after_routing (fired once the route is resolved, with whether the request is a genuine 404 — for redirect-style logic). index.php no longer references any plugin by name. See the updated Plugin System documentation for details.
• Confirmation messages in the Maintenance, Booking, Newsletter, and Redirects plugin admin pages now use the same auto-dismissing message style as the rest of the admin panel, instead of a plugin-specific banner that stayed on screen until the page was reloaded.
  Download Plugins

Fixed

• Fixed admin sessions being shared between separate SynaptikCMS installs living under the same domain (e.g. a demo site in a sub-folder) — each install's admin login now uses its own uniquely-named session cookie, so logging into one no longer silently logs you into another with the wrong account name displayed.
• Fixed active plugins' own admin pages incorrectly highlighting the "Tools" sidebar section instead of the plugin's own top-level sidebar entry.
• Fixed active plugins' sidebar links reordering themselves depending on which plugin's admin page was currently open, instead of keeping a stable order.
• Redirects plugin: fixed the admin sidebar link and post-save redirects pointing to a broken URL (e.g. /plugins/admin/index.php?... or a doubled /admin/admin/...) on any install not living at the domain root — admin-side URL building now resolves the CMS root from the plugin's filesystem path instead of the request-dependent getBaseUrl().
• Redirects plugin: fixed redirect destinations entered as a relative path (e.g. /nouvel-article/) sending visitors to the domain root instead of the CMS's own sub-directory — the stored destination is now resolved against the site's base URL before being sent in the Location header. Full external URLs (https://...) are unaffected.

SynaptikCMS v1.3

[1.3] — 2026-07-17

Added

• Plugin system — SynaptikCMS now supports standalone plugins: self-contained folders in /plugins (each with a plugin.json manifest) that extend the site without modifying core files. Plugins hook into the existing theme API (add_theme_action, apply_theme_filters) for front-end behaviour, and into a new lightweight hook system for admin integration.
• Extensions page (Tools → Extensions) — lists every plugin detected at the CMS root, with one-click activate/deactivate. Activation state is stored in plugins.json.
• Active plugins can register their own entry in the admin sidebar, and render a full page inside the standard admin layout (sidebar, top bar, footer) via a new generic plugin page router — no plugin needs to reimplement the admin chrome.
• First plugin built on this system: Booking, a standalone appointment-booking module (separate download, not bundled with core) — public calendar with weekly recurring availability and date exceptions, per-type appointment durations, admin approval workflow (pending/confirmed/refused/cancelled), and automatic email notifications with .ics calendar attachments for both the client and the site admin, including optional phone-callback reminders.

Changed

• Admin WYSIWYG editor: added a delete button to collapsible sections and tab-group tabs (hover the section header), retroactively applied to existing content on load
• Admin WYSIWYG editor: added a colour-picker button next to the delete button on collapsible sections and tab-group tabs, letting you change a section's accent colour instantly without reopening the source view

New Plugins

• Booking - Standalone appointment booking module with calendar availability, admin approval workflow, and ICS calendar invites.
• Newsletter - Email newsletter signup with double opt-in and a manual article digest sender.
• Redirects - Manual 301/302 URL redirects, plus an optional 404-to-home fallback.

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SynaptikCMS v1.2.1

SynaptikCMS version 1.2.1 — 2026-07-11

Changed

• Category pages now include content from sub-categories (any depth), instead of only exact category matches
• Tag and category merge dropdowns are now sorted alphabetically instead of following insertion order

Fixed

• Fixed a critical bug where saving an article/page/project with tags could silently overwrite its own slug with the slug of the last tag entered, occasionally causing it to overwrite and delete an unrelated existing item that happened to share that slug
• Fixed a bug where double-clicking or double-tapping the Publish button could submit the form twice, creating a duplicate article/page/project with an auto-incremented slug
• Fixed category and tag orphan counts in the admin panel now account for pages, not just articles and projects, so the displayed orphan count matches what the purge action actually removes
• Fixed Template Editor triggering a "leave page" browser warning when saving a file
• Article and project cards now display resolved tag names instead of raw slugs
• Admin WYSIWYG editor's HTML sanitizer is no longer stripping inline icons on save
• Axion theme: fixed display issues (data-reveal removed from grid containers whose size depend on number of items) and CSS fixes

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SynaptikCMS v1.2

[1.2] — 2026-06-26

Added

• Added a built-in translation editor: edit any locale's strings directly from the admin panel, and create new locales by duplicating en.json with one click — accessible from Tools → Translations and from the Settings → General language selector.
• Admin language can now be different from front-end language, both can be set from the Settings section.
• Replaced the CSS-only theme editor with a full Template Editor: browse and edit every file of the active theme (PHP, CSS, JS, JSON) from a single grouped file dropdown, with per-file backups and adaptive stats (lines, rules/variables for CSS, functions/comments for PHP & JS).
• New themes: Downloadable Here
• Theme SynaptikDocs
• Theme Atrium
• Theme Myelin
• Theme Axion

Changed

• Admin interface improvements: now fully responsive
• Modified sidebar to display flyouts for all sections when collapsed
• Editor sidebar is now collapsible to focus on content writing / edition
• Modified admin tabs style to be more visible
• Modified Alt-text-assistant and Seo-overview to display tabs in the same style as settings
• Moved SEO Overview to the Tools section of sidebar
• Improved header scripts, added async to the JS files to improve load speed even more.
• Architecture Changes:
• Tags are now stored as slugs in item files ("tags": ["my-tag"] instead of "tags": ["My Tag"]). Display names are resolved at render time from tags.json. Renaming a tag now only requires updating tags.json — no item files are touched when only the display name changes; item files are updated only when the slug itself changes.
• Categories follow the same pattern: item files now store the category slug ("category": "anatomie" instead of "category": "Anatomie"). Display names and parent relationships are resolved from categories.json. Renaming a category only rewrites item files when the slug changes.
• Creating a tag or category inline from the content editor (without going through the dedicated management pages) now automatically upserts the new entry into tags.json / categories.json, keeping the stores always in sync with actual content.
• Moved static assets (/css, /js) into /assets/css and /assets/js, and front-end locale files into /lang/front/ for a cleaner root directory structure.

Fixed

• Fixed CSS display issue in file manager list view, which was hiding the folder name. Replaced folder icon with SVG that fits the admin design better.
• Fixed a tag duplication bug in the content editor where renaming a tag (e.g. "Themes" → "themes") would leave the old display string in existing item files, causing both versions to appear in the tag input suggestions.
• Fixed missing categories in data/categories.json: some were used by content items but absent from the store, causing getCategoryPath() to fail silently and breaking hierarchical URLs for those categories and their children.

SynaptikCMS 1.1

This release brings major improvements to the admin, with a brand new interface, a dark/light mode, and bug fixes.

[1.1] — 2026-06-13

Added

• Homepage SEO fields — dedicated meta title, meta description, keywords, OG title, OG description and OG image configurable from the SEO tab in settings; independent from the global site title and description
• Major overhaul and improvements of admin:

  • Added dark/light mode in admin

  • Top bar — A sticky admin toolbar is now displayed on the front end when logged into the admin, providing quick access to the dashboard, content editing, and site settings

  • Quick edit links added on hover on item list table view

    • Added function to duplicate articles/pages/projects

  • Improved CSS styles: more modern, more uniform design, replaced all icons with more modern svg ones

  • Refactored all standalone files, now using common header.php and footer.php as templates, and layout.php

  • Social networks — Extended social media support from 5 to 18 platforms.

    • New platforms available in Settings → Social Media and rendered as inline SVG icons in the footer: Bluesky, Discord, Mastodon, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Telegram, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, WhatsApp, X, YouTube. Legacy twitter value preserved for backward compatibility.

  • Added

• Theme: Vanta - added missing support for related content and custom fields
• Theme: Nova - added missing support for related content and custom fields
• Theme: Natura - added missing support for shortcodes, related content and custom fields
• Theme: Mono - added missing support for custom fields, added styles for recent projects shortcodes
• Theme: introduction of Prism theme, flat design, colorful, with dark/light switcher.

Changed

• Sitemap generator: removed creation of page list
• Improved social media section display in settings

Fixed

• Fixed batch-selection mode not displaying correct table headers in content lists
• Fixed infinite recursion crash (memory exhausted) when using theme live preview — loadSettings() was calling resolve_admin_dir() which re-entered loadSettings() before the request cache was written; fixed by reading admin_dir directly from the already-parsed settings array
• Fixed a bug where temp folders wouldn't get deleted after a database restore in /bckps
• Fixed [toc] anchor links now include the current page URL instead of resolving to the site root
• Fixed _shortcode_parse_attrs() undefined index on empty quoted attribute values (e.g. url="")
• Fixed settings fields (site_description, meta fields): were double-encoded on each save due to htmlspecialchars() applied before JSON storage — values are now stored raw and encoded only at display time
• Fixed CSS display issue in search overlay where the clear button was misplaced
• Fixed canonical URL generation to always output a normalized, trailing-slash URL via cleanUrl() instead of $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], resolving duplicate-content canonical conflicts reported by Google Search Console
• Theme: Portfolio - fixed several display issues and missing CSS rules, galleries display
• Theme: Nova - fixed several display issues and missing CSS rules
• Theme: Natura - fixed several display issues and missing CSS rules, galleries display
• Theme: Vanta - fixed gallery displays

Full Changelog: https://github.com/synaptikcms/synaptik-cms/commits/v1.1

SynaptikCMS v1.0

Initial Release v1.0

SynaptikCMS Installation

There are no complicated setup steps or database.

1. Extract the ZIP archive
2. Upload the files to your server
3. Visit yourdomain.com/install.php (or yourdomain.com/subfolder/install.php if you uploaded the CMS files to a domain subfolder) to complete the initial setup (site name, language, admin password, admin folder name)
4. Start creating content!

That's it, you are already up and running!

Make sure to delete install.php and install.lock from your server after completing the site setup.

What's inside?

• One-step setup — extract the ZIP, run install.php, done
• Flat-file JSON data — split-file architecture, each content item is its own file
• Built-in i18n — front-end and admin panel, separate locale files
• Theme system — hooks, filters, partials, CSS editor, live theme preview
• Content types — Articles, Pages, Projects (Portfolio)
• Editing formats — supports HTML (WYSIWYG) and Markdown content-editing
• Draft system — manually or autosaved JSON drafts, one-click publish
• Autosave — save posts automatically at user-defined intervals so you never lose content, even after closing a page accidentally
• Categories and Tags — organize and link your content as you like, merge categories or tags
• Related Content: display related items a per-post basis, pick content manually or let the algorithm decide what to show
• Image Galleries built-in — add one or more image galleries to your posts, choose between 4 layouts (grid, masonry, justified or carousel)
• Scheduled Publication — delay publishing your post and set a date for automatic later posting
• Post Preview — see posts in current theme's context before actually saving or publishing
• Custom Fields — display your own specialized information beyond standard default fields
• Built-in Powerful Search Engine — Ctrl+K (or CMD+K) overlay, no external dependency
• Media Manager — upload, browse, delete, rename, reorganize with drag and drop, batch-image compression
• Shortcodes engine — galleries, TOC, callouts, quotes, buttons, contact form, recent articles/projects - easily add your own custom shortcodes
• SEO built-in — meta tags, Open Graph, JSON-LD schema, canonical URLs, sitemap generator...
• Backup and Restore — save your database, media and settings in once click, restore them in 1 click
• Menu Builder — create your optimal navigation menu easily with a drag and drop custom tool
• CSS Editor — live-edit your current theme's CSS styles
• Alt Text Assistant — add alt-text and captions to all your gallery images in a centralized place
• RSS Feed — added automatically in theme headers - no user action required
• Automatic Updates — get notified about updates directly in the dashboard, update your CMS in one click