Briefing for technical press #
This page is for developer magazines, IT news sites, technical podcasts and engineering bloggers. It gives you the
technical facts about Exponential in one place, each with its source, so you can write with confidence and spend
your interview time on design decisions. Facts are as of 18 October 2026; check them before you publish.
Contents #
- The stack in one table
- Databases
- Engines and web servers
- Getting and installing it
- How it is developed
- Story angles for technical readers
- Technical claims to avoid
The stack in one table #
| Topic | Fact | Source |
|---|
| What it is | "a professional PHP application framework with advanced CMS (content management system) functionality", with a "fully customizable and extendable content model" | Exponential 6, the kernel |
| Main features | Content classes, versions, multilingual, search, roles, approval and scheduled publication, multisite, e-commerce, workflows, templates, a headless REST API, clustering, a plugin API | Same section (from the README) |
| PHP | 8.0 to 8.5 supported on the development line; 7.4 usable without support; PHP 7.4 usable without support from 6.0.15 | PHP versions |
| Testing | CI runs the test suite on PHP 8.1 to 8.5 and checks that 8.0 boots, on every push to main and every pull request | Same section |
| License | GNU GPL v2 or later; documentation GNU FDL 1.3 or later | Who is 7x?, Open source licenses |
| Packages | The kernel is the Composer package se7enxweb/exponential; its composer.json required 66 se7enxweb packages on 18 October 2026 | 7x in numbers |
| Code age | Oldest commit 2 September 2002; 27,242 commits on main on 18 October 2026 | Same table |
Databases #
"Supported databases (Exponential 6.0.x), in order of preference: 1. SQLite 3 (the default) · 2. PostgreSQL ·
3. MongoDB · 4. MariaDB · 5. Oracle · 6. MySQL" (Database support).
| Point | Source |
|---|
| SQLite needs no database server; "the whole content repository is one file" | Database support |
| MongoDB works "through an adapter that translates the kernel's SQL-shaped calls into MongoDB operations", with documented limits; it arrived with 6.0.14 | Same page; 6.0.14 changelog |
| Microsoft SQL Server has no driver; it is "known to be possible with additional work" | Same page |
Engines and web servers #
| Engine | Status in the documentation | Source |
|---|
| Exponential Velocity | "recommended for every stage; tier 1"; PHP 8.0+ | Operating system support, Web servers |
| Apache httpd 2.4 with PHP-FPM | tier 1, "the classic setup and shared hosting" | Same table |
| FrankenPHP | "production-ready alternative" | Same table |
| nginx with PHP-FPM | tier 2 | Same table |
| PHP's built-in server | "development only" | Same table |
Operating systems are documented in four tiers, from "Tested here" to "Not possible today"; tier 3 is "a reasoned
expectation, not a test result" (Operating system support, The four tiers).
Velocity's own facts and figures, with their measuring conditions, are on Covering Velocity releases.
Getting and installing it #
- Git first. "The recommended way is to get the kernel and every se7enxweb extension as Git clones with their full
history" (Git first).
- Three ways to get the code:
git clone plus composer install (recommended), composer create-project, or
composer require (Getting the code). - One-command install on the development line:
./console exp:install --apply builds a complete site on SQLite
(Install in one command). - Published tags never change (Published versions never change).
How it is developed #
| Practice | Source |
|---|
Commit messages start with Added:, Updated:, Fixed:, Removed: or Renamed:, checked by a hook and CI | CONTRIBUTING.md |
| "Every pull request is merged; while it is open, its author squashes and rebases it onto main as the reviews ask, and main's history is never rewritten after the merge" | How the project grows |
| Administration templates carry no inline styles, so a strict Content Security Policy can be enforced | CONTRIBUTING.md, Security headers |
| Every change since December 2023 is explained in the history and recorded in the ledger | The history pages as a source |
Story angles for technical readers #
Technical claims to avoid #
Related pages #
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