Glossary

Public methods and properties that are used to interact with Kirby's objects; a set of REST endpoints used for retrieving and manipulating information.

A YAML file that defines the form fields and several settings for the Panel. Blueprints are stored in /site/blueprints.

A set of pages, files or users is what we refer to as collection. A collection in Kirby can be filtered, sorted, navigated and more. Kirby also has a built-in feature to share collections between your templates, snippets, controllers and plugins.

Kirby is built on a flexible component system: the template engine, Markdown parser, thumbnail generator and more can be overridden by a component plugin.

Content can refer either to the content folder or to anything within the content folder: text files, media files or metadata files.

Content Representations allow you to output your content in different formats, e.g. JSON for your frontend JS library of choice or to use Kirby as an API for other tools, an automatic RSS feed representation of your blog or a plain text representation of your résumé.

A PHP file that contains the logic for a specific page template. Controllers are stored in /site/controllers.

The folder on a web server that holds the web pages for a specific website/domain. Also called docroot. Typical folder names are for example www, public_html or htdocs.

The smallest content unit in a Kirby content file, comparable to a column header in a database. Fields can have different field types that are defined in a blueprint file.

A method you can use on a field object, e.g. to manipulate its output, check if it contains a value, and more.

A KirbyText shortcut for adding elements like links, images, specially styled content etc. in fields.

KirbyText is Kirby's extended version of John Gruber's popular Markdown syntax. KirbyText helps with adding images, files, internal links, etc. KirbyText can be extended with custom tags and filters.

A markup language that uses plain text formatting syntax and can be converted to HTML and other formats. Created by John Gruber in 2004.

A page refers to a folder in the file system that is accessible via an URL. The currently active page can be accessed via the $page variable. It gives you access to the page's data, attached files, subpages and more.

Page models extend Kirby's default Page object. Methods that you define in a Page model are available everywhere in Kirby where you call a page of the extended type.

The Panel is Kirby's fast and powerful web interface to manage your website in the browser. The Panel is highly customizable in many ways for different project needs.

A route is a URL pattern that when called executes a defined action, for example to return a particular page, create a new page, read data from a file etc.

Sections are used in blueprints to organize content or to display information. Kirby comes with four built-in section types but you can create your own in a plugin.

The $site object represents the root of your site with all the information stored in /content/site.txt. It is also the access point for registered users, available languages on multi-language sites and more.

SmartyPants is a Kirby fork of Michel Fortin's/John Gruber's typography prettyfier. It converts ASCII punctuation characters into “smart” typographic punctuation HTML entities.

Snippets are blocks of code that can be reused anywhere in your code base. Snippets are stored in /site/snippets.

The Starterkit is your perfect companion when you start out with Kirby. It comes packed with content, templates and blueprints. Explore the possibilities of Kirby and learn from these examples to build your own site.

Templates are .php files that render the content of your pages. They contain the HTML for the page together with some PHP control structures. They may also contain logic, but we recommend the use of controllers for more complex logic. Templates are stored in /site/templates.

Vue is the JavaScript framework Kirby's admin Panel is built with.

The Whoops debugger is a comfortable way to detect issues in your templates and plugins and fix them quickly. It is activated by default when Kirby is in debug mode, but if you prefer you can disable it to fall back to regular PHP error handling.

YAML is a human friendly data serialization standard. In Kirby, this markup language is used to write blueprints.