RailsPress
A mountable blog + CMS engine for Rails 8

RailsPress is a mountable Rails engine that gives your app a complete content management system — namespaced and isolated so it stays out of your way.

You can read more at Railspress.org.

It manages three kinds of content:

Your blog. Chronological content published over time — articles, news, announcements. Categories, tags, draft/published workflow.

• Rich text editing with Lexxy + markdown mode toggle
• Categories, tags, draft/published workflow
• SEO metadata (meta title, meta description)
• Reading time auto-calculation
• Header images with focal point cropping
• Import/export (markdown + YAML frontmatter)

Your pages of structured content. A portfolio with projects, a collection of case studies, a resources page with links — anything with its own schema that isn't a blog post.

You define a regular ActiveRecord model, include Railspress::Entity, and RailsPress gives it a full admin interface with CRUD, search, pagination, image uploads, and tagging — no scaffolding or custom views required.

• Define fields with railspress_fields DSL or let RailsPress auto-detect from your schema
• Supports string, text, rich text, boolean, datetime, attachments, array fields, and more
• Focal point image cropping for any attachment
• Polymorphic tagging
• Custom index columns, searchable fields, scopes
• Generator: rails generate railspress:entity Project title:string description:text

The copy and images on your site itself. Your homepage hero headline, an "About Us" blurb, a call-to-action, a footer tagline — the content that normally lives hardcoded in templates and requires a developer to change.

Blocks are organized into groups (e.g., "Homepage Hero", "Contact Info") and each block is either text or an image. You reference them in your views and they become editable in the admin — or inline, right on the page.

• Chainable Ruby API: Railspress::CMS.find("Hero").load("headline").value
• View helpers: cms_value("Hero", "headline") and cms_element("Hero", "headline")
• Inline editing — right-click any cms_element in the frontend to edit in place
• Auto-versioning with full audit trail
• Required blocks that can't be accidentally deleted
• Image blocks with upload, hints, and focal points
• Export/import block groups as ZIP

Most content doesn't fit neatly into "blog posts." A portfolio piece isn't a post. A homepage headline isn't a post. RailsPress gives you the right tool for each kind of content instead of forcing everything through one model.

Admin Interface

• Dashboard with content stats and recent activity
• Full CRUD for posts, categories, tags, block groups, blocks, and entities
• Drag-and-drop image uploads with progress
• Collapsible sidebar, responsive design
• Vanilla CSS with BEM naming (rp- prefix) — no framework dependencies

Developer Experience

• Focal point image concern for any model: focal_point_image :cover_photo
• CSS variable theming
• Generators for installation and custom entities

• Rails 8.1+
• Ruby 3.3+
• ActionText
• Active Storage

Ensure ActionText and Active Storage are installed:

rails action_text:install
rails active_storage:install

Add to your Gemfile:

gem "railspress-engine"

Run the install generator:

bundle install
rails generate railspress:install
rails db:migrate

Mount the engine (the install generator does this automatically):

# config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  mount Railspress::Engine => "/railspress"
end

The admin interface is publicly accessible by default. Add authentication before deploying:

# app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :authenticate_user!, if: :railspress_admin?

  private

  def railspress_admin?
    request.path.start_with?("/railspress/admin")
  end
end

See CONFIGURING.md for more authentication patterns including Devise integration.

Access the admin at /railspress/admin. From there you can manage posts, entities, and blocks.

Create posts with rich text, categories, tags, and header images. Build your own frontend controllers and views — see the Blogging guide.

Generate a model and register it:

rails generate railspress:entity Project title:string client:string description:text

class Project < ApplicationRecord
  include Railspress::Entity

  railspress_config do |c|
    c.admin_title = "Projects"
    c.searchable_columns = [:title, :client]
  end
end

It now has a full admin interface at /railspress/admin/entities/projects. See the Entity System guide.

Set up inline editing for admins:

# config/initializers/railspress.rb
Railspress.configure do |config|
  config.inline_editing_check = ->(ctx) { ctx.current_user&.admin? }
end

Reference blocks in your views:

<%# Raw value (no editing wrapper) %>
<h1><%= cms_value("Homepage", "headline") %></h1>

<%# With inline editing (admins can right-click to edit in place) %>
<h1><%= cms_element("Homepage", "headline") %></h1>

<p><%= cms_element("Homepage", "subheadline") %></p>
<%= image_tag cms_value("Homepage", "hero_image"), alt: "Hero" %>

Create the "Homepage" group and its blocks in the admin at /railspress/admin/content_groups. See the Inline Editing guide.

rails generate railspress:install                    # Full setup
rails generate railspress:entity Project title:string # Add a managed entity

Posts, Entities, and Blocks:

Everything else:

bundle install
cd spec/dummy && bundle exec rails db:migrate && cd ../..
bundle exec rspec

Available as open source under the terms of the O'Saasy License.

The Rails trademarks are the intellectual property of David Heinemeier Hansson, and exclusively licensed to the Rails Foundation. Uses of "Rails" and "Ruby on Rails" in this project are for identification purposes only and do not imply an endorsement by or affiliation with Rails, the trademark owner, or the Rails Foundation.