Refinery CMS
Open source content management system built as a Ruby on Rails application, with a visual editor for site owners.
Refinery CMS is an open source content management system built as a Ruby on Rails web application. It is installed as a RubyGems package. The back end offers a visual editor for pages, and site content is kept in a database, with SQLite as the default and MySQL and PostgreSQL as the other options named in the prerequisites guide. Templates are ERB views that a site can override.
Worth knowing
The README says the project website is not currently live, and the repository’s guides are the reference for installation and hosting. Some guides say they were written for earlier Refinery and Rails versions.
The Docker deployment guide runs the application as a container on a server, so it needs a long-running process on the host.
Identity
Rendering and deploy
Releases
Adoption
Sources
- 2026-10-26: links, Written in, License, GitHub stars
api.github.com/repos/refinery/refinerycms - 2026-10-26: links, Categories, Admin interface
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/blob/main/readme.md - 2026-10-26: Maintainer
raw.githubusercontent.com/refinery/refinerycms/main/license.md - 2026-10-26: Runtime, Minimum runtime, Databases
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/blob/main/doc/guides/1%20-%20Getting%20Started/1%20-%20Installation%20Prerequisites.md - 2026-10-26: Minimum runtime, First release
rubygems.org/api/v1/versions/refinerycms.json - 2026-10-26: Built on, Install with, Content storage
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/blob/main/doc/guides/1%20-%20Getting%20Started/2%20-%20Getting%20Started.md - 2026-10-26: Runs as
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/blob/main/doc/guides/7%20-%20Hosting%20and%20Deployment/4%20-%20Docker-deploy-to-DigitalOcean.md - 2026-10-26: Multilingual
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/blob/main/doc/guides/2%20-%20Refinery%20Basics/7%20-%20Translate%20Refinery.md - 2026-10-26: Templating
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/blob/main/doc/guides/2%20-%20Refinery%20Basics/3%20-%20Overriding%20views.md - 2026-10-26: Current major version, Last release
github.com/refinery/refinerycms/releases/tag/v4.1.0 - 2026-10-26: Contributors
api.github.com/repos/refinery/refinerycms/contributors