Wren 0.6.0 'Bewickii'

IndexNow built in. Publishing, updating, or deleting content now pings IndexNow so Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Seznam and Naver recrawl within minutes — zero configuration, the key generates and serves itself, and a settings toggle turns it off. Pings never block or break publishing. Also fixes a stale-read edge case in the settings cache. Upgrading: replace index.php.

Wren 0.5.0 'Ludovicianus'

Menu links. A third content type alongside articles and pages: add external links to your site menu from the new Links tab — label, URL, position, published toggle. Each link's slug doubles as a short URL on your own site (/download → your latest release). Upgrading: replace index.php.

Wren 0.4.1

Bugfix: article excerpts and automatic search descriptions no longer include the contents of <style> or <script> blocks embedded in a post. Upgrading: replace index.php.

Wren 0.4.0 "Pacificus"

SEO throughout. Every article and page gains a Search description field (with an automatic excerpt fallback), and every public page now carries canonical URLs plus Open Graph and Twitter card tags so shared links unfurl properly. New: a live sitemap.xml built from your published content, a robots.txt route for pretty-URL sites, and settings for a site-wide search description and social share image. Themes need no changes — tags inject automatically, or place {{seo_head}} in your theme to control placement. Upgrading: replace index.php; the database updates itself.

Wren 0.3.0 "Hiemalis"

Two features, one release:

Static homepage and articles page. In Settings, point Homepage shows at any published page and it becomes your front page — turning Wren from a blog engine into a small-website engine. The article list moves to its own menu entry with a configurable name and address (default: Blog), pagination intact, and the homepage's old URL redirects to /.

Per-page title visibility. Pages gain a "Show title on the page" checkbox — untick it for a clean front page that doesn't display its own name.

Also introduces automatic database migrations: upgrading remains "replace index.php" and the database updates itself on the next page load. Upgrading from 0.1.0: replace index.php — your database and theme carry over untouched.

Wren 0.1.0 "Troglodytes"

A whole website in one small file.

Wren is a CMS in the spirit of sNews, rebuilt from scratch for modern PHP. One file, one SQLite database it creates itself, no framework, no build step, no dependencies.

In this first release: one-minute browser setup · articles with markdown, drafts, and pagination · pages with an orderable menu · RSS feed · theming via a single optional theme.html with nine {{tags}} · hashed passwords, CSRF protection on every form, prepared statements throughout, and login throttling.

Requires: PHP 8.1+ with PDO SQLite — standard on virtually every host.
Install: upload index.php, open it in a browser, fill in one form. Done.