Evolution CMS on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS by cloudimg

Evolution CMS on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Evolution CMS is an open source, actively maintained PHP content management system and application framework descended from the long-standing MODX Evolution lineage. It gives developers and content teams a fast, template-driven CMS with no imposed structure: pages ("resources"), reusable snippets, chunks and template variables, a flexible tag-based templating language, and a full-featured Manager administration dashboard.

What is included

• Evolution CMS 3.5.7, the GPL-3.0 licensed application, installed from a cloudimg-mirrored copy of the official tagged release
• nginx, PHP 8.3 FPM and MariaDB, tuned and hardened for this appliance
• A unique administrator account and database password generated per VM on first boot
• The install wizard is deleted from disk once first boot completes, so it can never be reached again
• 24/7 cloudimg support

Secure by default

Evolution CMS normally bootstraps through a database configuration step and a browser install wizard. This image never ships that state: there is no database schema, no administrator account and no install wizard reachable at any point a customer could see it. On first boot, before the web server is reachable at all, a one shot service runs Evolution CMS's own non-interactive installer to create the schema and the single administrator account with unique per VM credentials, proves the new credentials work through the real Manager login form, proves common default passwords are rejected, and only then deletes the install directory and opens the web server. The web server and PHP runtime are gated on that provisioning step, so nothing can ever be reached before it completes.

Licensing

Evolution CMS is free and open source under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

Get started

Read the per instance administrator password from the root only credentials file, browse to the instance address, sign in at /manager/, change the administrator password, then create your first document and template. cloudimg engineers can help with domain and certificate setup, backups and upgrades after purchase.