Introduction to Forja

Forja (Spanish: forge) — an open-source multi-site CMS where you forge your content. Like a blacksmith shapes raw metal into something useful, Forja lets you shape, manage, and deliver content across multiple sites from a single powerful backend.

Forja is built with a Rust backend (Rocket 0.5.1), a React admin dashboard (Vite + MUI), and pluggable frontend templates (Astro, Next.js, etc.). It is designed for developers who want a fast, type-safe CMS they can self-host, extend, and integrate into their own stack.

Why Forja?

Most headless CMS platforms are either too heavy, too opinionated, or too expensive for developers who just need a solid API behind their portfolio or blog. Forja fills that gap:

• Built in Rust -- the backend compiles to a single binary, starts in milliseconds, and handles thousands of requests per second with minimal resource usage.
• Multi-tenant by design -- run multiple sites from a single instance, each with its own content, navigation, and settings.
• Developer-first -- every resource is available through a RESTful JSON API with full OpenAPI (Swagger) documentation.

Key Features

Area	What you get
Multi-site	Create and manage multiple independent sites from one installation
Content types	Blog posts, static pages, CV entries, legal pages, documents
Media library	Upload, crop, and serve images with local or S3 storage
Navigation	Hierarchical navigation menus with drag-and-drop ordering
Taxonomy	Categories and tags with full i18n support
Internationalization	Localized content fields, navigation titles, and admin UI
Authentication	Dual auth -- API keys (X-API-Key) and Clerk JWTs (Authorization: Bearer)
RBAC	Four permission levels: Master > Admin > Write > Read
Webhooks	Event-driven webhook delivery with retry and delivery logs
Redirects	301/302 URL redirect management per site
Audit logging	Track who changed what, and when
Content scheduling	Publish and unpublish content on a schedule
Block editor	Rich text editing with slash commands, tables, code highlighting, and media picker
AI Content Assist	Generate blog drafts, SEO metadata, excerpts, and translations via configurable LLM providers
Privacy-first analytics	Pageview tracking without cookies or PII -- GDPR-friendly by design
Site modules	Enable only the features you need per site (blog, pages, CV, legal, documents, AI)
RSS feeds	Auto-generated RSS 2.0 feeds for blog content
Notifications	In-app notification system for admin users
Templates	Pluggable frontend templates (ships with an Astro blog template)

Architecture at a Glance

┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌───────────────┐
│  Frontend   │────▶│  Rust Backend    │────▶│  PostgreSQL   │
│  (Astro,    │     │  (Rocket 0.5)    │     │               │
│   Next.js)  │     │  /api/v1/*       │     └───────────────┘
└─────────────┘     │  /api-docs       │     ┌───────────────┐
                    │                  │────▶│  Redis        │
┌─────────────┐     │                  │     │  (rate limit) │
│  Admin UI   │────▶│                  │     └───────────────┘
│  (React +   │     └──────────────────┘     ┌───────────────┐
│   MUI)      │                              │  S3 / Local   │
└─────────────┘                              │  (media)      │
                                             └───────────────┘

• Backend -- Rust with Rocket 0.5, SQLx, PostgreSQL. Serves the JSON API at /api/v1 and Swagger UI at /api-docs.
• Admin -- React SPA built with Vite, Material UI, React Query, react-hook-form, and zod. Served at /dashboard in production, localhost:5173 in development.
• Frontend templates -- Statically generated sites that consume the API. An Astro blog template ships out of the box at templates/astro-blog/.

Screenshots

Admin Dashboard -- System health, content stats, and setup checklist:

Swagger UI -- Interactive API documentation with all endpoints:

Admin Login -- Clerk-powered authentication with social login support:

Quick Links

• Prerequisites -- what you need installed before you begin.
• Installation -- clone, configure, and install dependencies.
• First Run -- start the dev environment and verify everything works.
• Configuration -- full reference of all environment variables.
• API Reference -- explore every endpoint with request/response examples.
• Admin Guide -- learn how to manage content through the dashboard.
• AI Content Assist -- set up AI-powered content generation.
• Analytics -- privacy-first pageview tracking.
• Architecture -- deep dive into the system design.

License

Forja is released under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license. You are free to use, modify, and distribute it, provided that any modified versions you deploy as a network service also make their source code available under the same license.