ProcessWire

Introductory information about ProcessWire including what makes it unique, background/history, a demonstration site, software requirements, license and more.

ProcessWire is a friendly and powerful open source CMS with an API that is a joy to use at any scale. It is both a content management system (CMS) and framework (CMF) built to save you time and work the way you do. With all custom fields, a secure foundation, proven scalability and performance, ProcessWire connects all of your content seamlessly, making your job fast, easy and fun. ProcessWire gives you more control over your fields, templates and markup than other platforms, while ProcessWire’s API makes working with your content easy and enjoyable. Managing and developing a site in ProcessWire is shockingly simple compared to what you may be used to. ProcessWire is widely trusted by web professionals for its exceptional consistency, stability and security; revered by web developers for its API that saves time and makes work fun; valued by web designers for its adaptability and flexibility with modern website/application content management needs; and loved by clients for its no-nonsense interface and ease-of-use in adding, updating and maintaining content. New versions of ProcessWire are released just about every week on the development branch. ProcessWire is a timeless tool for web professionals that has always been committed to the long term. It started in 2003, gained the name ProcessWire in 2006, and has been in active development as an open source project since 2010. Now more than a decade later (2026), we’re just getting started, as ProcessWire continues to grow and develop into the next 10 years and beyond. While ProcessWire has been around for a long time, don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it till today. We are fundamentally different from other projects in that we don’t make a lot of noise, we’re not into promotion, we value quality over quantity, sustainability over growth, and a friendly community over popularity. ProcessWire is designed to be a silent partner, not easily identified from the front-end of any website. We don’t aim to be big, we are instead focused on being best-in-class. Web developers find ProcessWire when the time is right, after they’ve tried some other platforms. And once they start using ProcessWire, they tend to stay. ProcessWire is addictive, easy to maintain for the long term, and doesn’t have the security and upgrade woes of other platforms. But don’t take our word for it; unless your livelihood depends on some other platform, find out for yourself. Weekly ProcessWire news is posted by Teppo Koivula on his site ProcessWire Weekly. Weekly core updates and related topics are posted by Ryan Cramer in the ProcessWire support forum News and Announcements board. Simply extract the ProcessWire files to an http accessible location and load the URL in your web browser. This will start the installer. See our Installation Guide for more details and instructions. If you run into any trouble, please see our Troubleshooting Guide. Upgrading is easy and usually just a matter of replacing your /wire/ directory with the one from the new version. But to be safe, before proceeding with any version upgrade, please see the Upgrading ProcessWire guide and perhaps keep it open during your upgrade in case you need to refer back to it. When upgrading from one 3.x version to another, please use the general upgrade process. This consists primarily of making sure you've got everything backed up and then just replacing your /wire/ directory with the one from the newer version. Version-specific upgrade notes If using PHP 8.4+, you might want to replace your /index.php file with a copy from the new version to avoid an unnecessary PHP notification in debug mode. If you are upgrading from a 3.x version prior to 3.0.135 then please also follow these instructions. If you are upgrading from any 2.x version then please see upgrading from ProcessWire 2.x. If you run into any trouble upgrading, please see our troubleshooting upgrades guide. 1. Edit this file: /site/config.php 2. Find this line: $config- debug = f