Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to the questions people ask most about Exponential today. Each answer links to the page with the details.

What is Exponential?

Exponential is an open source content management system written in PHP, maintained by 7x and the Exponential Foundation. It continues the code of eZ Publish, a system its creator discontinued. The current line is Exponential 6.0: the newest release is 6.0.14 (7 June 2026), and 6.0.15 is in development. The History of Exponential tells the story from 1999.

How do I install it?

With PHP and Composer, two commands install a working site on SQLite, without a database server:

composer create-project se7enxweb/exponential exponential
cd exponential
php bin/php/console exp:install --apply --random-password --url=http://localhost:8087
php bin/php/console exp:velocity start --engine=php

The setup wizard in the browser and the kickstarter are the other ways. See Installing Exponential 6.0, or try the public demo first.

Which PHP versions are supported?

Exponential 6.0.15 runs on PHP 8.0 to 8.5; PHP 7.4 is usable without support. The releases 6.0.8 to 6.0.14 require PHP 8.1. Use the newest PHP your system offers. PHP 8.0 support means the stock PHP of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (and AlmaLinux 9, Rocky Linux 9) runs it. See PHP 8.0 support.

Which databases are supported?

In order of preference: SQLite 3 (the default, a full production database), PostgreSQL, MongoDB (PHP 8.2 or later), MariaDB, Oracle 19c or later (through the ezoracle extension) and MySQL. See Database support.

Which web servers can serve it?

Exponential Velocity, its own application server, is recommended: it keeps the application loaded in persistent workers, serves HTTP and HTTPS itself and has a response cache. Apache or nginx with PHP-FPM, LiteSpeed, Caddy and IIS work as well. As of 6.0.15 Velocity is part of Exponential and composer install installs it. See Velocity is part of Exponential 6.0.15.

How do I upgrade?

Back up, put the new code in place, update the database, rebuild the autoloads and caches, and verify. From 6.0.15, ./console exp:upgrade does the database, scripts and deploy in one command, with a backup first. Upgrading to 6.0 has the steps; Upgrading lists every path, from eZ Publish 3.x, 4.x and 5.x too.

How do I add features? What is an extension?

An extension adds to Exponential without changing the kernel, so an upgrade keeps it. Most are Composer packages (se7enxweb/<name>); switch one on with ActiveExtensions[] or under Setup > Extensions. See Extensions.

Which distributions are there?

Exponential 6 is the PHP-only line this site documents. The Symfony based distributions (Exponential Platform Legacy, Nexus and DXP) and the site packages are compared in Distributions of Exponential.

What is the license?

Exponential is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its documentation is free documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later: see The license of this documentation. Each extension states its own license in its extension.xml and LICENSE file.

Where is the documentation?

Here, and in the help center that every Exponential 6 installation carries: open Help in the administration, or press the "?" button on any administration page for help about that page. It holds the installation, configuration, upgrading and extending books, a user manual, the feature pages and the documentation of every active extension. On this site: the help center and the User manual.

Where can I ask a question or report a bug?

• Questions: the Share Exponential forums, GitHub Discussions, and the chats on Discord and Telegram.
• Bugs: the issue tracker.
• Security problems: never in public; follow SECURITY.md.
• Commercial support, upgrades and development: 7x.

Getting Support explains every channel and what to try first.

How can I contribute?

Send fixes and features as pull requests to the repositories of se7enxweb on GitHub, improve this documentation, answer questions in the forums, or sponsor the work. See the Exponential Community page.

Earlier questions

The questions of the earlier documentation, answered again for Exponential 6. Where a question is about eZ Publish or eZ Systems, its answer says that it is historical and what to use today:

• Getting started with Exponential
• Installation
• Licensing options
• Contributing to the Exponential development
• Managing content
• Version and revision management
• Complex set ups - Multi-language
• Complex set ups - Clustering
• Caching - Serve data fast
• URL handling
• Design and templates
• eZ Market (the extension marketplace of the eZ Publish years)