The headless CMS for the rest of us

Yes. LessHeadCMS is built for exactly that. It needs PHP 8 (but PHP 7.4 will do just fine) with SQLite (PDO), which most standard shared hosting packages already provide. There is no Node.js runtime, no Docker container and no root access involved: you upload the files via FTP or install them with Composer, and the CMS runs like any other PHP application.

No. The server side is plain PHP. The editorial interface ships as prebuilt static files, so nothing has to be compiled or kept running on your hosting.

Either run composer create-project elverdaderobutschito/lessheadcms or download the release, unpack it and upload it via FTP. On first start you set an administrator password; after that you load your content model and start editing.

You describe your content model as a PlantUML class diagram: classes become content types, attributes become fields, and associations become relations. LessHeadCMS supports enums, required and unique fields, 1:1, 1:n and n:n relations, self-references and inheritance. From this one file it creates the database tables, the REST API and the editing forms.

You edit the diagram and LessHeadCMS shows you a diff of the schema changes before anything is applied. A database backup is written automatically before each migration, fields and classes can be renamed without losing data, and you are warned if a change would delete existing content.

LessHeadCMS stores everything in a single SQLite file. In our tests the list view opened in 0.23 seconds with 1,000,000 records, and 100 editors working simultaneously got 95% of responses in under 0.3 seconds without errors. These are measurements from a local test setup, not guaranteed for every hosting environment. A database abstraction layer is on the roadmap, so that you can later use a database of your liking.

Every content type in your model gets its own endpoints. List responses are paginated and include their totals (data, total, page, per_page, total_pages), and sorting, filtering and search run on the server, so frontends never have to load a whole table.

Yes. LessHeadCMS is free and open source under the GNU AGPL v3, including for client and commercial projects. The AGPL requires that if you modify LessHeadCMS itself and make it available to users over a network, you share your modified source code. Hosting providers who need different terms can ask about a commercial licence.

Yes. Permissions can be set per role, group or individual user, down to single fields and actions. Approval workflows are defined as short text blocks: states, transitions, which groups may trigger them, who gets assigned and what happens on approval – for example, contributors submit and an editor-in-chief publishes.

Yes, through your content model: add a language field and a "translation of" relation to a content type, and each language version becomes its own linked record. There is no separate, hidden translation layer.

Yes. All interface texts, as well as the names of your content types and fields, can be translated in the admin area. An English translation is included, further languages can be imported and exported as CSV files, and each user chooses their own interface language.

Strapi and Directus are mature, Node.js-based platforms with large ecosystems, GraphQL and hosted cloud offerings. LessHeadCMS takes a narrower approach: plain PHP and SQLite on standard shared hosting, a REST API, and a content model defined as a diagram instead of in an admin UI. It suits projects where low hosting requirements and a simple, model-driven setup matter more than a large plugin ecosystem.