CMSXL began in early 2022 as the largest project of my career: a new core built from decades of ideas, experiments, and abandoned architectures. What started as a downloadable CMS evolved into the abstract, no-file engine that now powers the entire QRaway ecosystem.
When I started designing CMSXL, I knew immediately:
this wasn’t “another system.”
This was supposed to be a landmark, a culmination of everything I had built since the late 90s.
Business logic, architecture tricks, routing decisions, content models — parts of them came all the way from 1999, rewritten many times, surviving across platforms until they no longer reflected my own vision.
By 2022, those old ideas weren’t “bad.”
They were just not me anymore.
And CMSXL became the place where all of that would be reborn.
In January–February 2022, I outlined the system on a whiteboard.
It didn’t fit.
Literally.
Both sides were full — layers, modules, services, unknowns, ideas.
It was the first time I saw how large the project truly was.
But after a year and a half of relentless work, the impossible happened:
⚡ a fully abstracted CMS
📁 with no file-based structure
🧠 running on a new generation core
🌐 serving every QRaway site right now, in real time
I won’t dive into technical specifics here — this is a timeline, not documentation —
but anyone curious can find the full enterprise spec at [the link].
In its earliest form, CMSXL wasn’t able to create Digital Spaces.
But it handled thousands of domains from one unified panel with ease.
The philosophy was simple:
download the system
install it on your server
configure themes
customize
and run your own universe of sites
And for a moment, that felt like the right path.
Businesses were ready to adopt it.
MojoHost showed serious interest — even potential collaboration.
Everything suggested CMSXL could become a traditional, self-hosted powerhouse.
But something in me hesitated.
Something felt… too small for what the system could become.
The name CMSXL carried an energy I couldn’t ignore.
Not “a CMS.”
Not “a toolkit.”
Something larger.
Something that shouldn’t be boxed into installers and server instructions.
And when I looked at the core — at its abstraction, its flexibility, its scale — I realized:
It didn’t want to be a CMS.
It wanted to be an engine.
The base of a platform, not a product.
A foundation, not a download.
A stage, not a sandbox.
So I made a difficult choice:
to stop treating CMSXL as a traditional CMS and instead push it into its natural evolution —
a Digital Space Engine.
The engine that now powers QRaway.
The engine that turned ideas into spaces, and spaces into a platform.
Why did I do it?
Maybe because I felt the responsibility.
Maybe because the architecture demanded it.
Maybe because the system itself was asking for more.
Or maybe —
just because I could.
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