What is Z-BlogPHP used for?

Z-BlogPHP is a long-running, MIT-licensed PHP blogging platform and CMS from China that supports MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL. It is a good fit for personal and Chinese-language blogs, and lightweight sites on shared PHP hosting.

Is Z-BlogPHP open source?

Yes. Z-BlogPHP is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at zblogcn/zblogphp and is written mainly in PHP.

Yes. Z-BlogPHP is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Z-BlogPHP?

Yes. Z-BlogPHP can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What are some alternatives to Z-BlogPHP?

Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include Bludit, ThriveX and October CMS. SaaS products in the same category include BlogBowl, Blogsitefy and Voog.

Is Z-BlogPHP actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Z-BlogPHP was on 21 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.8.0.4020, published on 20 September 2026. The project has 877 stars on GitHub.

Z-BlogPHP: open-source CMS

About Z-BlogPHP

Z-BlogPHP is a blogging program from the Z-Blog community, first released in 2005 and described as one of the few Chinese open-source CMS projects that is still updated regularly. It aims to let writers focus on writing, with a small footprint, fast performance and support for large amounts of content.

For developers it offers a customizable architecture with a rich plugin interface plus themes and templates, and the project describes its goal as a building-block style site system. It runs on Windows, Linux or macOS with servers such as IIS, Apache, nginx, Lighttpd and Caddy, and supports PHP versions from 5.2 to 8.4 with MySQL 5+, MariaDB 10+, SQLite 3 or PostgreSQL.

Installation means uploading the files, opening the site to run the installer, choosing a database, creating an admin account and removing the install folder afterward. Documentation and a developer community are available, and security issues should be reported privately to the maintainers. The project is released under the MIT license; the README and site are primarily in Chinese.

Key features

Plugin interface and theme templates
MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and PostgreSQL support
PHP 5.2 to 8.4 compatibility
Web installer with database setup
Runs on IIS, Apache, nginx and Caddy
Developer documentation and community

Good fit for

→Personal and Chinese-language blogs
→Lightweight sites on shared PHP hosting

Built with: PHP; MySQL; SQLite; PostgreSQL
Tags: blog; cms; php; mysql; sqlite; postgresql; chinese; plugins

Z-BlogPHP: questions and answers

What is Z-BlogPHP used for?: Z-BlogPHP is a long-running, MIT-licensed PHP blogging platform and CMS from China that supports MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL. It is a good fit for personal and Chinese-language blogs, and lightweight sites on shared PHP hosting.
Is Z-BlogPHP open source?: Yes. Z-BlogPHP is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at zblogcn/zblogphp and is written mainly in PHP.
Is Z-BlogPHP free?: Yes. Z-BlogPHP is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Z-BlogPHP?: Yes. Z-BlogPHP can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What are some alternatives to Z-BlogPHP?: Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include Bludit, ThriveX and October CMS. SaaS products in the same category include BlogBowl, Blogsitefy and Voog.
Is Z-BlogPHP actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Z-BlogPHP was on 21 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.8.0.4020, published on 20 September 2026. The project has 877 stars on GitHub.