Open Source

Your server. Your data.
Your code.

Guidevera is free and open source, licensed under the MIT License. Run it on your own infrastructure, read the source, fork it, contribute to it.

View on GitHub Help Center

Self-hosted

Run Guidevera on your own server. Your documentation stays on infrastructure you control — no cloud dependency, no external services required.

MIT Licensed

The MIT License gives you the freedom to use, modify and distribute Guidevera. Commercial use is permitted. Attribution is all we ask.

No vendor lock-in

Your data lives in a standard MySQL database. Export pages as Markdown or PDF at any time. Migrating away is always an option.

The Repository

Everything is in the open.

The full application source is on GitHub — controllers, models, templates, JavaScript, CSS, database schema, CLI commands, and tests.

PHP 8.2+ / CakePHP 5.3 backend
Bootstrap 5 + jQuery frontend, single CSS file
MySQL / MariaDB — standard InnoDB, utf8mb4
CLI installer — one command to set up all 17 tables
PHPUnit integration and feature tests included
DocFx documentation in the docs/ folder

Browse the source

IT-Consulting-Kinner / Guidevera

📁 src/          Controllers, Models, Services, Commands
📁 templates/    Layout, Pages, Users, Files, Elements
📁 webroot/     app.css, pages.js, init.js
📁 tests/        PHPUnit feature & unit tests
📁 docs/         Architecture, API, Database, Security
📁 config/       app.php — 40+ config options
📄 composer.json
📄 README.md
📄 LICENSE       MIT

Quick Start

Up and running in minutes.

Guidevera runs on a standard LAMP stack. No Docker required, no cloud account, no external services.

# 1. Clone and install dependencies
git clone https://github.com/IT-Consulting-Kinner/Guidevera
composer install --no-dev
# 2. Configure database and security salt
cp config/app_local.example.php config/app_local.php
# 3. Run the installer
bin/cake install
# → Admin account created
# → 17 tables ready
# → Visit your installation

Full installation guide in the Help Center.

Requirements

What you need.

PHP 8.2+ with extensions: intl, mbstring, pdo_mysql
MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+ — InnoDB, utf8mb4
Composer for dependency management
Apache with mod_rewrite or Nginx
Cron access for scheduled publishing and quality checks (optional)

License

MIT License — free to use, modify and distribute.

The MIT License is one of the most permissive open source licenses. You can use Guidevera in commercial environments, modify the source code, and distribute your own version — as long as the original license notice is included.

No CLA required. No contributor agreement. Just open source.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 IT-Consulting Kinner

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

Found a bug? Have an idea for a feature? The project is open for issues and pull requests on GitHub.

Report an issue Open a pull request

Fork the repository on GitHub and clone it locally.
Create a feature branch — keep changes focused on a single topic.
Run the test suite with vendor/bin/phpunit and make sure nothing breaks.
Open a pull request against the main branch. Describe what the change does and why.
Discuss and iterate — feedback happens in the pull request thread before merging.

For bugs: please include steps to reproduce, PHP version, and relevant error messages. Check open issues first to avoid duplicates.