Beacon is an open-source content management system built with Phoenix LiveView for Elixir teams that need fast render times on content-heavy pages and the SEO performance that depends on them.

What it is

Beacon is a CMS written in Elixir and built on the Phoenix framework and Phoenix LiveView, released under the MIT licence. It lives in the Elixir and Phoenix ecosystem, publishes packages to Hex as beacon and beacon_live_admin, and has project documentation and a homepage at beaconcms.org. The project is organised into three main components. Core is the rendering and data layer: a functional website can be built and deployed by inserting components into the database and running a server. Admin is a LiveView interface for managing layouts, pages, and all other resources. Page Builder is a drag-and-drop interface for building pages, aimed at non-technical users, and is still in early development.

The concrete problem Beacon solves is rendering speed on content-heavy sites. It brings the rendering speed benefits of Phoenix to even the most content-heavy pages, with faster render times aimed at boosting SEO performance rather than bolting a slow rendering layer onto a fast application. In practice it replaces the hand-built content layer a Phoenix team would otherwise maintain itself: site structure, layouts, pages, and an editing interface are provided as packages instead of being written from scratch and kept alive alongside the application code.

Key capabilities

• Core stores layouts, pages, and components in the database, so a site can be assembled and deployed by running a server rather than shipping every content change through code.
• Admin provides a LiveView UI to manage layouts, pages, and all other resources, at the /admin path in a generated site.
• Page Builder offers a drag-and-drop page building UI targeted at non-technical users, and is in the initial stages of development.
• Igniter-based installers generate a working site: mix igniter.new for a fresh project and mix igniter.install for an existing Phoenix project, both accepting the --beacon.site flag to name the new site.
• dev.exs is a self-contained Phoenix application running Beacon with sample data and code reloading enabled, started with iex --sname core@localhost -S mix dev.
• A reference sample application running the latest Beacon is published as BeaconCMS/beacon_demo.
• Installation guides and recipes are published at hexdocs.pm/beacon, including the "Your First Site" guide and the installation page.

Who uses it and how

• Existing Phoenix teams with Phoenix LiveView already in place add Beacon with mix igniter.install beacon,beacon_live_admin --beacon.site my_site, keeping their current application and gaining the CMS inside it.
• New projects start with mix igniter.new my_app --install beacon,beacon_live_admin --with phx.new --beacon.site my_site, generating an application and a named site together.
• Publishers of content-heavy pages deploy a Phoenix application whose rendering path is the selling point, which is the SEO case the project is built around.
• Non-technical editors work through the Admin LiveView interface for layouts and pages, with Page Builder as the intended drag-and-drop path once it matures.
• Developers running Beacon locally use the dev.exs application with sample data and code reloading, or run a named node when developing against Beacon LiveAdmin.

Getting started

Install the Phoenix and Igniter installers with mix archive.install hex phx_new and mix archive.install hex igniter_new, then add Beacon with mix igniter.install beacon,beacon_live_admin --beacon.site my_site for an existing project or use mix igniter.new for a new one. After generation, run mix setup and mix phx.server, then open http://localhost:4000 for the default home page or http://localhost:4000/admin to manage the site.

How it compares

No comparable CMS products are named in the facts provided for this listing, and Beacon stands alone in this registry on that basis.

When to use it — and when not to

Beacon is pre-1.0 and the maintainers state that incomplete features and breaking changes are expected before a stable v1.0 release, so teams that need a frozen API or a zero-migration upgrade path should look elsewhere for now, and teams outside Elixir, Phoenix, and Phoenix LiveView cannot adopt it at all. Self-hosting means operating a Phoenix application end to end: database setup and asset building are part of the mix setup step, and the deployment model is a running server backed by a database rather than a hosted content service. The Page Builder, which is what makes the CMS usable by non-technical editors, is explicitly in early development, and the repository carries 70 open issues, so the editing experience is the least settled part of the project.

mix archive.install hex phx_new && mix archive.install hex igniter_new

mix igniter.new my_app --install beacon,beacon_live_admin --with phx.new --beacon.site my_site

mix igniter.new my_app \
--install beacon@github:BeaconCMS/beacon,beacon_live_admin@github:BeaconCMS/beacon_live_admin \
--with phx.new \
--beacon.site my_site

mix igniter.install beacon,beacon_live_admin --beacon.site my_site

mix igniter.install \
beacon@github:BeaconCMS/beacon,beacon_live_admin@github:BeaconCMS/beacon_live_admin \
--beacon.site my_site

mix setup
mix phx.server

mix setup

iex --sname core@localhost -S mix dev