Loom

Weave content into websites.

A lightweight, Git-native publishing engine that renders Markdown and reusable components into fast, cacheable websites using plain PHP.

Loom is not a CMS. There's no admin panel, no database, no build step. Just content.

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Quick Start

Create a new site that uses Loom as its engine:

mkdir my-site && cd my-site
git init
composer init --name=you/my-site --type=project
composer require mrdave996/loom

Create the site structure:

my-site/
├── public/
│   ├── index.php          ← bootstrap (see below)
│   ├── .htaccess
│   └── assets/
│       └── css/
│           └── style.css
├── content/
│   └── pages/
│       └── index.md       ← your first page
├── templates/             ← optional overrides
└── cache/

public/index.php — the only file you write:

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';

$rootDir = dirname(__DIR__);
$loomDir = __DIR__ . '/../vendor/mrdave996/loom';

// Merge: site templates override Loom defaults
$templatesDir = is_dir($rootDir . '/templates')
    ? $rootDir . '/templates'
    : $loomDir . '/templates';

// Boot the engine
$router     = new Loom\Router($rootDir);
$content    = new Loom\ContentLoader();
$renderer   = new Loom\Renderer($rootDir, $templatesDir);
$cache      = new Loom\CacheManager($rootDir);
$seo        = new Loom\SeoGenerator($rootDir);

// Handle sitemap/robots
if ($seo->handle()) exit;

// Route
$pageFile = $router->resolve($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
if (!$pageFile) { http_response_code(404); /* handle 404 */ exit; }

// Cache check
$cached = $cache->get($pageFile);
if ($cached) { echo $cached; exit; }

// Render
$page = $content->load($pageFile);
$html = $renderer->render($page);
$cache->set($pageFile, $html);
echo $html;

Create your first page (content/pages/index.md):

---
title: "My First Page"
description: "Hello from Loom."
template: default
---

## Hello World

Your content goes here.

Preview locally:

php -S localhost:8080 -t public/

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

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Migrate from WordPress

Import an entire WordPress site — pages, posts, media, styles, navigation, and forms:

# In your site repo (not the Loom repo)
composer require mrdave996/loom
php vendor/bin/loom import /path/to/export.xml

That's it. Loom will:

• Convert all pages and posts to Markdown with YAML front matter
• Download and convert images to WebP for fast loading
• Extract theme CSS and build a Loom-compatible stylesheet
• Generate navigation from your WordPress menus
• Convert contact forms to Loom's built-in FormHandler
• Create 301 redirect rules for any changed URLs

Using UpDraftPlus? Point the import at your SQL dump:

php vendor/bin/loom import /path/to/backup.sql

After import, preview your site:

php -S localhost:8080 -t public/

Verify everything looks good:

php vendor/bin/loom verify

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How It Works

[ Request ]
    │
    ▼
[ Router ] → resolve URI to markdown file
    │
    ▼
[ Cache Check ] → serve cached HTML if valid
    │
    ▼ (cache miss)
[ ContentLoader ] → parse YAML front matter + Markdown
    │
    ▼
[ Renderer ] → load PHP template + inject partials
    │
    ▼
[ CacheManager ] → save rendered HTML
    │
    ▼
[ Output ]

The entire core runtime is under 600 lines of PHP across 6 files. Small enough for an AI to hold in a single context window.

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Site Structure

Your site repo (not the Loom framework repo):

my-site/
├── composer.json            # requires mrdave996/loom
├── public/
│   ├── index.php            # bootstrap (thin — loads engine from vendor)
│   ├── .htaccess            # URL rewrites
│   └── assets/
│       └── css/style.css    # your site's styles
├── content/
│   ├── pages/               # Markdown pages
│   └── posts/               # blog posts (optional)
├── templates/               # optional: override Loom's defaults
│   ├── layouts/             # page layouts
│   └── partials/            # reusable components
└── cache/                   # generated HTML (gitignored)

The framework lives in vendor/mrdave996/loom/ — you never edit it directly.

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Templates

Loom ships with default templates and partials. Override any of them by placing a file with the same name in your site's templates/ directory.

Layouts

Template	Use case
default	Simple page with body content
pillar	Long-form page with component slots
blog	Blog listing from content/posts/
raw	Minimal — no nav, no footer, just content

Components

Include reusable partials by listing them in your page's front matter components array:

• hero — Hero section with title, subtitle, and CTA
• features — Grid of feature cards
• pricing — Pricing table
• faq — Accordion FAQ section
• cta — Call-to-action block

---

Content Format

Every page is a Markdown file with YAML front matter:

---
title: "Page Title"
description: "SEO description."
template: pillar
components:
  - hero
  - features
  - faq
  - cta
hero_title: "Welcome"
hero_subtitle: "Build something great."
features:
  - title: "Fast"
    description: "Single-digit millisecond TTFB."
  - title: "Simple"
    description: "Zero framework, zero database."
---

## Your content here

Markdown body rendered as HTML.

---

CLI Commands

Run from your site repo root:

# Verify content integrity
php vendor/bin/loom verify

# Import WordPress site
php vendor/bin/loom import export.xml
php vendor/bin/loom import export.sql

# Scrape a mirrored site
php vendor/bin/loom scrape scrape/sites/example.com.php

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Updating Loom

composer update mrdave996/loom

Your content and templates are in your own repo — updating the framework never touches them.

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Performance

• On-demand caching — First request renders and caches; subsequent requests serve static HTML
• WebP images — All images converted to WebP during import
• Zero database — No queries, no connection overhead
• Minimal runtime — Under 600 lines of core PHP

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License

MIT

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Credits

Built with:

• league/commonmark — Markdown parsing
• intervention/image — Image processing
• league/html-to-markdown — HTML conversion