maxsite/cms

Purpose and Runtime

MaxSite CMS is a PHP CMS for content sites, blogs, business sites, and landing pages. It runs on a web server with Apache .htaccess/mod_rewrite, PHP 7.1+ (recommended PHP 8), and MySQL/MariaDB 5.6+. The repository embeds a legacy CodeIgniter runtime plus the MaxSite application layer.

HTTP Entry and Framework Boot

index.php is the public front controller; it boots CodeIgniter, whose routing and request lifecycle reside in system/core/CodeIgniter.php, system/core/Router.php, and system/core/Output.php. Application routes/controllers are configured under application/config/routes.php and implemented primarily by application/controllers/maxsite.php. Requests are dispatched into MaxSite’s own content/admin/AJAX modes rather than a conventional controller-per-feature MVC structure.

MaxSite Core Initialization and Extension Points

The CMS runtime is centered on initialization, hooks, options, plugins, security, and output services in application/maxsite/common/core/init.php, application/maxsite/common/core/hooks.php, and application/maxsite/common/core/page-out.php. This is the main boundary between CodeIgniter infrastructure and CMS behavior. Hooks and plugin discovery allow core, templates, and extensions to inject behavior during request processing.

Content and Persistence Flow

Public content handling is organized around pages, categories, comments, and page-query/formatting modules: application/maxsite/common/page.php, application/maxsite/common/page/get-pages.php, and application/maxsite/common/comments.php. Database access is configured from application/config/database.php-distr during installation and uses CodeIgniter MySQL/MySQLi drivers (system/database/DB.php, system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_driver.php); an additional PDO abstraction exists at application/maxsite/common/psr4/Pdo/PdoConnect.php. Runtime file storage is separated into uploads/ and protected application storage at application/storage/.htaccess.

Rendering, Types, and Themes

A request resolves to a CMS page type—home, page, archive, category, search, feeds, users, etc.—whose shared render definitions live in application/maxsite/shared/type/. Template selection and composition are managed by the core template services and the active template, shipped as application/maxsite/templates/default/index.php, application/maxsite/templates/default/main/main.php, and application/maxsite/templates/default/main/blocks/. Templates can supply PHP components, shortcodes, custom options, layouts, and front-end assets, making them an application-level customization boundary.

Administration and Authoring

The admin entry flow is in application/maxsite/admin/admin.php, with shared admin behavior in application/maxsite/admin/common.php and layout in application/maxsite/admin/template/default/template.php. Admin plugins implement content CRUD, category/menu/sidebar/user management, system options, plugins, files, and editors—for example application/maxsite/admin/plugins/admin_page/, application/maxsite/admin/plugins/admin_users/, and application/maxsite/admin/plugins/admin_options/. Several operations expose dedicated AJAX PHP endpoints, so authorization and input validation must be preserved across both page and AJAX flows.

Plugin Ecosystem and Integrations

Feature plugins are filesystem-discovered modules under application/maxsite/plugins/, conventionally with index.php execution and info.php metadata. They extend parsing, comments, feeds, caching, SEO, forms, authentication, scheduled work, and external services. Notable integration surfaces include SMTP email (application/maxsite/plugins/smtp_mail/), Facebook/Loginza authentication (application/maxsite/plugins/fbauth/, application/maxsite/plugins/loginza_auth/), RSS import (application/maxsite/plugins/rss_get/), and Markdown via bundled Parsedown (application/maxsite/plugins/parser_markdown/Parsedown/Parsedown.php).

Installation, Updates, and Cache

First-time installation begins at install/index.php; installer stages collect database settings and apply the bundled schema from install/installer/model.sql.txt. The remote updater is a separate secured entry point at update-maxsite/index.php, using update-maxsite/_key.php and archive extraction. Cache domains are filesystem-backed under application/cache/db/, application/cache/html/, and application/cache/rss/; the core cache layer is application/maxsite/common/core/cache.php.