VonCMS v1.24.11 Late Night Update "HourGlass"

🌟 Community & Open Source Transition

A huge thank you to everyone who has tried VonCMS and supported us with a GitHub ⭐! Your interest and feedback are what drive this project forward.

VonCMS is on a mission to modernize the PHP publishing landscape. The project is preparing for the v1.25.x open-source milestone under the GPL-3.0-only license. This transition is an invitation for the community to help shape the next era of lightweight publishing.

Help us grow: Spread the word, share the repository with fellow publishers, and help us build a lighter, faster future for the web. Together, we can make VonCMS the go-to alternative for high-performance publishing.

For shipped release truth, see CHANGELOG.

At A Glance

⚡ Performance Baseline

VonCMS is built for speed, not just in the editor, but for the final reader and the system owner.

Package Notice

This repository contains documentation and source code references only.

Download the full deployable system from:

https://github.com/Vondereich/VonCMS/releases

VonCMS ships as a pre-built Deploy ZIP for shared hosting. Production sites do not need Node.js, Vite, npm, or a separate frontend host.

[!CAUTION] Update note: OTA updates are available for the current v1.24.x series after the updater download and SHA256 verification flow was fixed in the v1.24.10 baseline. If your site is on an older version and you want to upgrade to v1.24.11, use the manual update flow: delete the old assets folder, upload the new Deploy ZIP files, then follow the Upgrade Guide.

The Product Story

1. The Problem

Traditional CMS platforms are easy to deploy, but often feel heavy, dated, and difficult to tune. Modern headless stacks are powerful, but they usually add deployment complexity, paid hosting assumptions, and more moving parts than many publishers want.

2. The Answer

VonCMS keeps the deployment model simple while upgrading the publishing experience:

• React 19 admin for fast editing and dashboard workflows.
• PHP/MySQL runtime for familiar shared-hosting installation.
• SEO-aware public rendering so crawlers see the real article content, metadata, schema, and canonical links.
• Built-in publishing tools instead of depending on a pile of external plugins.

3. The Result

You get a CMS that feels modern to manage, stays realistic to host, and is shaped around actual publishing work: writing, importing, scheduling, searching, moderating, and shipping content.

💎 The VonCMS Philosophy

"Everything you need. Nothing you don't."

Most CMS projects hand you an empty shell and say "figure it out with plugins." VonCMS arrives with the lights on, the furniture in place, and the kitchen already stocked.

• Built for Publishers, Not Just Developers: The dashboard is designed for the person who publishes content daily, not the engineer who configured the server.
• Zero Plugin Chaos: Features that would be 10+ separate plugins in WordPress (SEO, Analytics, Forms, Newsletter, Security, Media Optimization) are built directly into the core.
• Short Request Path: React talks to PHP. PHP talks to MySQL. No heavy middleware stack, no plugin overhead—just pure performance.

VonCMS Philosophy

"Everything you need. Nothing you don't."

Most CMS projects hand you an empty shell and say "figure it out with plugins." VonCMS arrives with the lights on, the furniture in place, and the kitchen already stocked.

• Built for Publishers, Not Just Developers: The dashboard is designed for the person who publishes content daily, not the engineer who configured the server.
• Zero Plugin Chaos: Features that would be 10+ separate plugins in WordPress (SEO, Analytics, Forms, Newsletter, Security, Media Optimization) are built directly into the core.
• Short Request Path: React talks to PHP. PHP talks to MySQL. No heavy middleware stack, no plugin overhead—just pure performance.

Release Snapshot

Developer Extension Guides

Theme and plugin development now use separate packaged guides:

• Theme Development covers public theme architecture, WYSIWYG rendering, theme registration, shared SDK usage, SEO ownership, performance, and verification.
• Plugin Development covers system plugin registration, activation state, settings ownership, custom HTML sanitization, PHP security principles, article hooks, and release checks.

What Shipped in v1.24.11

• Profile Loading Stability: TechPress, Digest, Corporate Pro, and the default public profile now reserve activity-tab height and render skeleton placeholders while profile articles/comments are still loading, preventing footer float-up on slow connections.
• Dashboard Count Loading Truth: dashboard Articles, Pages, Comments, and Active Users cards now show loading placeholders until count-only totals resolve instead of flashing capped or fallback preload counts.
• Public Search Copy: Default and Digest public search headers now avoid exact results found wording while discovery is using count-skipping load-more mode.
• Smoke Coverage: integration smoke now guards profile loading skeletons, footer-safe profile activity height, dashboard count placeholders, public search approximate-count copy, and the Active Users count-only path.
• Previous Final Hotfix: see v1.24.10 for stale account-linked comment avatar repair and release packaging proof.

What Shipped in v1.24.10

• Final Hotfix: fixed stale account-linked comment avatars and refreshed release documentation for the current public baseline.
• Main HourGlass Closeout Work: see the v1.24.9 notes below for the larger editor, search, OTA, loading, profile, media, and polish updates.

What Shipped in v1.24.9

• Durable TipTap Image State: image size/alignment choices now persist through save, sanitize, reload, editor preview rehydration, and public rendering, with bubble buttons reflecting the selected image/video alignment.
• Bounded Search: public theme search and admin Content Manager search clamp long queries to 120 characters, show visible guidance, debounce server fetches cleanly, and clamp oversized post/page API search terms before SQL binding.
• OTA Update Recovery: the updater accepts GitHub release-asset redirect hosts while validating redirect hops and forwarding caller-supplied SHA256 digests through both dashboard and direct updater entry points.
• Readiness-Based Skeleton Loading: the bundled skeleton no longer fades on a fixed timer; React readiness owns the transition so fast pages move immediately and slower boots avoid a blank shell.
• Ads Manager Helper Copy Cleanup: Ads Manager helper panels now use concise, behavior-neutral guidance for header, in-feed, and popup slots without changing placement, sizing, frequency, or injection behavior.
• Late HourGlass Micro-Polish: public profile email masking, admin profile read-only boundaries, Media CDN upload URL normalization, TechPress long-logo header alignment, thumbnail crop defaults, and shared ad/widget containment are covered by smoke guards.
• Release Truth Sweep: README, changelog, metadata, and smoke guards now keep v1.24.9 closed as the HourGlass preflight and late micro-polish lane.

Current HourGlass Baseline

HourGlass keeps the TipTap editor migration, public discovery scaling, extension runtime gating, profile stability, and shared-hosting safety work from the earlier v1.24.x patches. For full patch-by-patch history, see CHANGELOG.

Search Benchmark Snapshot

Dataset: 30,035 posts.

Result: 1.6x faster than legacy LIKE search on this dataset.

This is a scoped local benchmark snapshot, not a universal hosting guarantee. Real production speed still depends on database size, hosting tier, cache/CDN setup, traffic pattern, and active theme behavior.

Core Features

Bundled themes include TechPress, Digest, Portfolio, Prism, Corporate Pro, and Default, with dark-mode support across the active theme line.

Quick Start

Requirements

Fresh Installation

1. Download the latest VonCMS Deploy ZIP from Releases.
2. Extract it into your web root.
3. Open yoursite.com/install.
4. Complete the installer wizard.
5. Sign in at /admin.

Updating Existing Sites

If your site is on an older version, update manually to v1.24.11 with the current Deploy ZIP first. In cPanel/File Manager or FTP, delete the old assets/ folder before uploading the new files so old hashed JS/CSS files cannot stay behind.

After the site is already on v1.24.10 or newer, use the admin dashboard OTA updater for future patches. Go to Settings -> System, run the update, and then verify the homepage, one post, and the admin dashboard.

Manual ZIP replacement is only the fallback when the admin panel is unavailable, the install is too old for OTA, or the server blocks the updater.