Contao

Contao (formerly TYPOlight)
	Browser-based content management system
Original author(s)	Leo Feyer
Developer(s)	Contao Association
Initial release	2006
Stable release	5.3.7 / 2024-04-19[±]
Repository	github.com/contao/contao ;
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Unix-like;; Microsoft Windows
Available in	28 languages
	List of languages Fully translated: Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Russian, Spanish; 95% or more complete: Czech, Romansh, Serbian, Swedish, Finnish, Romanian, Slovak, Burmese, Danish, Hungarian, Polish, Albanian, Latvian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, ; 80% or more complete: Lithuanian, Croatian, Portuguese
Type	CMS
Licence	GNU LGPL (Free software)
Website	contao.org

Contao (formerly TYPOlight) is a free content management system (CMS) for medium to large websites. The program specializes in back-office (i.e. for developers) and front-office (i.e., for users) accessibility, and observes XHTML, HTML5 and CSS standards, according to W3C/WAI guidelines, to generate pages. The program is an open-source project, published in its original form in 2006 by Leo Feyer.

Minimal/suggested installations

As of 4.4, Contao requires an

PHP extension GDLib (to allow image resizing) and SOAP (access to the extension repository).^[4] Contao runs successfully with current versions of major browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer (from version 8 on).^[4]

Product name

As of the pre-release version 2.9. RC1 on June 6, 2010, the TYPOlight product was renamed Contao. Developer Leo Feyer justified the change on the grounds that TYPOlight had often been confused with

Kasper Skårhøj, whilst the word “light” was sometimes misunderstood to imply that the CMS was suitable only for small projects.^[5]

In his instructional book (not freely available) on the CMS, Websites erstellen mit Contao, Peter Müller writes that the software name “Contao” has “a good ring”, pointing out that C, O, N are the first letters of “content” and that tạo is a Vietnamese word that means “to model, generate or shape.” The name is appropriate, he suggests, because the program “allows content to be generated, shaped and managed.”[6]

Reviews, awards and critiques

In 2007

Packt Publishing named TYPOlight, as it was then known, as the second-place winner in its awards category of “Most Promising Open-Source CMS”.^[7]

Versions

Legend:	Old version, not maintained	Older version, still maintained	Current stable version	Latest preview version	Future release

Software	Major releases	Minor releases	Bugfix releases	General corrections to	Security relevant corrections to
TYPOlight	1.x	Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0	1.0.0 (2006-03-12)
	2.x	Old version, no longer maintained: 2.0	2.0.0 (2006-11-24)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.1	2.1.0 (2006-11-28) to 2.1.22 (2007-01-29)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2	2.2.0 (2007-02-28) to 2.2.12 (2007-04-10)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.3	2.3.0 (2007-04-25) to 2.3.4 (2007-05-11)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.4	2.4.0 (2007-06-07) to 2.4.7 (2007–10-11)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.5	2.5.0 (2007-12-12) to 2.5.9 (2008-06-06)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.6^[8]	2.6.0 (2008-08-12) to 2.6.8 (2010-05-01)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.7^[9]	2.7.0 (2009-05-01) to 2.7.7 (2010-05-01)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.8^[10]	2.8.0 (2010-02-16) to 2.8.4 (2010-06-30)
Contao		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.9^[11]	2.9.0 (2010-07-02) to 2.9.5 (2011-05-18)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.10^[12]	2.10.0 (2011-08-11) to 2.10.4 (2011-12-30)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 2.11 (LTS)^[13]	2.11.0 (2012-02-15) to 2.11.17 (2014-04-07)
	3.x	Old version, no longer maintained: 3.0^[14]	3.0.0 (2012-10-30) to 3.0.6 (2013-03-21)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 3.1^[15]	3.1.0 (2013-05-21) to 3.1.5 (2013-11-08)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 3.2 (LTS)^[16]	3.2.0 (2013-11-21) to 3.2.21 (2015-06-05)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 3.3^[17]	3.3.0 (2014-05-26) to 3.3.7 (2014-11-24)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 3.4^[18]	3.4.0 (2014-11-25) to 3.4.5 (2015-03-27)
		Old version, no longer maintained: 3.5 (LTS)^[19]	3.5.0 (2015-06-05) to 3.5.40 (2019-04-11)	June 2018	May 2019
	4.x	Old version, no longer maintained: 4.0^[20]	4.0.0 (2015-06-09) to 4.0.4 (2015-10-16)	December 2015
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.1^[21]	4.1.0 (2015-11-26) to 4.1.3 (2016-04-22)	June 2016
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.2^[22]	4.2.0 (2016-06-18) to 4.2.5 (2016-10-27)	December 2016
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.3^[23]	4.3.0 (2016-11-25) to 4.3.11 (2017-06-02)	June 2017
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.4 (LTS)^[24]	4.4.0 (2017-06-15) to 4.4.57 (2021-08-21)	December 14, 2020	December 14, 2021
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.5^[25]	4.5.0 (2017-12-28) to 4.5.14 (2018-08-28)	August 2018
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.6^[26]	4.6.0 (2018-08-23) to 4.6.14 (2019-01-24)	February 2019
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.7^[27]	4.7.0 (2019-02-15) to 4.7.7 (2019-07-16)	August 2019
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.8^[28]	4.8.0 (2019-08-15) to 4.8.8 (2020-02-17)	February 2020
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.9 (LTS)^[29]	4.9.0 (2020-02-18) to 4.9.42 (2023-07-25)	February 14, 2023	February 14, 2024
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.10^[30]	4.10.0 (2020-08-18) to 4.10.7 (2021-02-16)	February 14, 2021
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.11^[31]	4.11.0 (2021-02-17) to 4.11.9 (2021-08-24)	August 14, 2021
		Old version, no longer maintained: 4.12^[32]	4.12.0 (2021-08-19) to 4.12.7 (2022-02-18)	January 14, 2022
		Older version, yet still maintained: 4.13 (LTS)^[33]	4.13.0 (2022-02-17) to 4.13.43 (2024-04-19)	February 14, 2025	February 14, 2026
	5.x	Old version, no longer maintained: 5.0^[34]	5.0.0 (2022-08-18) to 5.0.10 (2023-02-16)	February 14, 2023
		Old version, no longer maintained: 5.1^[35]	5.1.0 (2022-02-16) to 5.1.11 (2023-08-01)	August, 14, 2023
		Old version, no longer maintained: 5.2^[36]	5.2.0 (2023-08-15) to 5.2.10 (2024-02-16)	February 16, 2024
		Current stable version: 5.3 (LTS)^[37]	5.3.0 (2024-02-16) to 5.3.7 (2024-04-19)	February 14, 2027	February 14, 2028
		Future release: 5.4		February 14, 2025
		Future release: 5.5		August 14, 2025
		Future release: 5.6		February 14, 2026
		Future release: 5.7 (LTS)		February 14, 2029	February 14, 2030
	6.x	Future release: 6.0		February 14, 2027
	6.x	Future release: 6.1		August 14, 2027

Learning Contao

Instructional books

The following books on Contao are available (in German only).

Leo Feyer: Das offizielle Contao-Handbuch: Der Leitfaden für Anwender, Administratoren und Entwicklung (Official Contao manual: Guide for users, administrators and developers). Addison-Wesley, Munich 2010.
ISBN 978-3-8273-3014-7

Thomas Weitzel: Mit Contao Webseiten erfolgreich gestalten: Konzeption, Umsetzung, Beispielprojekte (Successful Contao websites: design, implementation, sample projects). Addison-Wesley, Munich 2010, 264 pages.
ISBN 978-3-8273-2892-2

Nina Gerling: Contao für Redakteure: Inhalte editieren und verwalten mit dem Open-Source-CMS (Contao for editors: Edit and manage content using the open source CMS). Addison-Wesley, Munich 2010.
ISBN 978-3-8273-2893-9 Online Handbuch

Anne-Kathrin Merz: Contao: Das umfassende Praxisbuch (Contao: The comprehensive practice book). Addison-Wesley, 2010.
ISBN 978-3-8266-5532-6

Peter Müller: Websites erstellen mit Contao (Create websites with Contao). Galileo Computing, 2010, 536 pages.
ISBN 978-3-8362-2010-1

Thomas Reindlmeier: Contao: Webseiten clever gestalten (Contao: cleverly designed websites). KnowWare, Osnabrück, 2010,
ISBN 978-87-91364-93-8

References

^ Open Source CMS Award, Previous Winners Archived 2009-07-07 at the Wayback Machine at packtpub.com

^ TYPOlight Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.6

^ TYPOlight Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.7

^ TYPOlight Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.8

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.9

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.10

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.11

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.0

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.1

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.2

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.3

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.4

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.5

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.0

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.1

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.2

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.3

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.4

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.5

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.6

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.7

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.8

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.9

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.10

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.11

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.12

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.13

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.0

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.1

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.2

^ Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.3

External links

Official website

Authority control databases: National

Germany

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contao&oldid=1220206114"

[1] "There it is - Contao".

[Contao_release-2] "Releases - contao/contao". github.com. Retrieved 2024-04-19.

[3] Contao Open Source CMS, Transifex translation tool. Accessed 20 June 2016.

[requires-4] Contao system requirements. Accessed 20 June 2016.

[5] Aus TYPOlight wird Contao Archived 2012-01-01 at the Wayback Machine (German)

[wemc-6] ISBN 978-3-8362-1651-7

[packt-7] Open Source CMS Award, Previous Winners Archived 2009-07-07 at the Wayback Machine at packtpub.com

[8] TYPOlight Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.6

[9] TYPOlight Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.7

[10] TYPOlight Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.8

[11] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.9

[12] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.10

[13] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 2.11

[14] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.0

[15] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.1

[16] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.2

[17] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.3

[18] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.4

[19] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 3.5

[20] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.0

[21] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.1

[22] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.2

[23] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.3

[24] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.4

[25] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.5

[26] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.6

[27] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.7

[28] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.8

[29] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.9

[30] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.10

[31] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.11

[32] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.12

[33] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 4.13

[34] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.0

[35] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.1

[36] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.2

[37] Contao Open Source CMS Changelog for the version 5.3

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