These pages explain the everyday work in Exponential: signing in, finding your way around the administration,
writing and publishing content, uploading media, translating, and what to do when something goes wrong. They are
written for editors and for anyone with an account on a site, and need no technical knowledge.
Every page describes what you see in the administration with the Admin 4 design, the design most installations
use. Other administration designs (Classic, AdminUI) have the same pages and buttons, arranged differently. What you
see also depends on your role: an editor sees fewer tabs and buttons than an administrator, and a button you are not
allowed to use is shown grayed out or not at all.
Start here #
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Velocity is part of Exponential 6.0.15 | Know what changed when the Velocity Internet / Web Application Server became part of Exponential: a turning point that makes Exponential one working stack (server, RAD platform, CMS, digital experience and e-commerce) |
| New in 6.0.15: static publishing | Publish your site free on GitHub Pages: what static publishing brings and where to start |
| Why Exponential supports PHP 7.4 | Know what is usable on PHP 7.4 without support and what needs PHP 8, how Composer picks the right packages for your PHP, how security is kept, and why the project bridges older PHP versions |
| Getting started | Sign in, take your first steps, and know where to find help |
| A tour of the administration | Know the header, the tabs, the side columns and the dashboard |
| Logging into the Editor | Sign in to the Editor, the interface for writing and publishing |
| Logging into the admin | Sign in to the administration, with lockout, design and safety tips |
| User manual | Do one task in the administration: one question per page, with who may do it, the steps and what can go wrong |
Who makes Exponential #
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Who is 7x? | Know the company behind Exponential: nearly thirty years with this code, from the eZ Publish years to Exponential 6, the products, the community and how to take part |
| Who is the Exponential Foundation? | Know the nonprofit that operates the open source project, the whole family of Exponential products and what the project commits to |
| Copyright and copyleft | Know who holds the copyright of Exponential (the Exponential Foundation and 7x together, since the historical shift of 29 October 2026), why the Foundation is named first, what the GPL lets you do, and how to write the notice in your own files and extensions |
| Our goals | Know why Exponential exists, what is already built in so you do not have to build it, why it is free software, how 7x earns a living, and why we invite you to join, with honest answers to doubts about our intentions |
| Community | Know the Exponential Community: the people who use, contribute to, promote and develop software using Exponential worldwide |
| Ecosystem | Know the greater ecosystem beyond the community: every part of the Exponential world within the PHP stack, its users and creators |
| Partners | Know the Exponential Partners: they contribute financially to the sustained future of the project, contribute code and more back to it, and engage directly with 7x and the Exponential Foundation |
| The Exponential project | Find the FAQ, the licensing questions, the roadmap, support, the community channels, how to build, contribute and give, as the project website exponential.earth presents them |
Everyday work #
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Creating and editing content | Create an item, fill in its fields, use the rich text editor, move and copy |
| Images, media and uploads | Upload one file or many at once, and keep the media library tidy |
| Bookmarking system pages | Keep Setup, the help, the audit trail or a filtered list in your bookmarks, in folders next to your content |
| Publishing, versions and the trash | Publish, keep drafts, go back to an older version, hide, remove and restore |
| Searching | Find content in the administration and on the site |
| Languages | Translate content, and choose the language of the administration itself |
| The layouts editor | Arrange the blocks of a page in zones, and publish the layout |
Accounts, roles and members #
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Your account and signing in | Sign in and out, change your password, turn on two-step sign-in |
| Setting up accounts for editors and administrators | Create an editor's account in the Editors group, check it, and hand it over so that only the editor knows the password; the same for the few administrators |
| What the Editor role allows | Know what an editor may do, and what stays with administrators |
| Managing members | As an editor, create, change, disable, move and remove the accounts of the site's members |
| The user audit log | Find out who did what to an account, when and from where |
Working faster, and getting help #
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Keyboard shortcuts | Work with the keyboard alone, in the administration and in these help pages |
| When something goes wrong | Tell the right people about an error, with what they need to fix it |
| Getting support | Get free help from the community (forums, Telegram, Discord, Slack) or paid help from 7x |
| Project files | Read the README, the security policy, the contributors' guidelines and the license of the repository in the help |
Grow from user to developer #
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Develop with Git | Install Exponential as Git clones with their full history (the recommended way to build websites), keep them up to date, and send fixes back as pull requests |
| Update with Git | Get updates as they are pushed to GitHub and update Composer to match, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or only at each release, by hand or automatically |
| Migrations | Schema and content changes written once as files and applied to every installation: paths for beginners, administrators and teams, 25 recipes, the reference, the FAQ and help when a migration fails |
| Recent content | The newest content of the site, submissions held for review with who sent them from where, and releasing, hiding or removing a selection at once |
| Migrations in the administration | See the state of the migrations in Setup > Migrations, run them, follow a run as it goes, and take a run back |
| Migrations versus migrating a site | Which of the two jobs called "migration" you need: changes of one site, or moving and upgrading a whole installation |
| Contribute extensions back | Publish your extensions so everyone can use them, and know what the GPL requires when you distribute one |
| Getting the code | Every way to install the code, with versions, tags and extensions explained |
Deeper guides #
When a help page is not enough, the guides go into every detail of one area. A few that editors use most:
My drafts and my pending items,
Versions of an object, Bookmarks,
Content languages, Two-step sign-in and
The content model and editing content. All guides are listed in
the guides' table of contents, and every term is explained in the glossary.
Choosing where Exponential runs #
For administrators and developers who choose the machine and the database of a site:
| Page | What it helps you do |
|---|
| Database support | Choose a database from the supported ones, in their official order (SQLite 3, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, Oracle, MySQL), and know what each needs |
| Operating system support | Check whether an operating system, processor and web server can run Exponential, from Linux to Windows and beyond |
| Page caching with LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed | Make a site on a LiteSpeed or OpenLiteSpeed server fast for anonymous visitors and crawlers: the server answers from stored pages without PHP, with no plugin and no code |
Become an Exponential Partner. Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and
develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for
mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster. Start with
Partners: start here and How to apply.