What's new in Elements CMS v2

The big addition is the Online Editor, but v2 also ships with two new components, a complete rewrite of the CMS core underneath, and an optional Pro upgrade for the Online Editor itself.

The Online Editor

The Online Editor is browser-based content editing for Elements CMS, included free with v2.

Setup is a single step in RapidWeaver Elements. Add the Online Editor component to a page, publish the site, and visit that page in a browser. The first time you land there, you'll get a setup screen: choose a username and password, point at the content folder you want to manage, and you're in. After that, visiting the page gives you a normal sign-in screen.

Once you're in, the writing flow is straightforward: create a new post, type a title, and start writing. Rich text formatting (bold, italic, lists, links, headings) works the way you'd expect — what you see is what your visitors see. Add images, save, and the post is on disk as Markdown. You don't need to know Markdown to use the Editor; if you'd rather work in Markdown directly, that's fine too — the Editor reads and writes the same .md files the components display, so you can switch between the Editor and a text editor of your choice with no conversion either way.

What v1 had: Markdown files you edited either in Elements or a separate text editor and manually uploaded.

What v2 has: that, plus a real Editor that runs in any browser, on any device. Everything else still works the same as v1. It's the same content format and the same files, meaning your existing projects will continue to work in v2.

Comments

Comments is a new component in v2. Add it to a page (typically inside an Item) and visitors can leave comments directly via a comment form.

Moderation happens inside the Online Editor — so the Comments component requires the Online Editor to be installed alongside it. The free version is enough to moderate comments; nothing in Online Editor Pro relates to comment moderation.

Spam handling is also built in meaning there's no third-party, no embed code, no separate moderation panel. Your comments and the moderation queue live on the same site as the rest of your content.

Search

Search is the second new component. Add it to a page and visitors can search across your Markdown files. Matches appear in a results list. Both the search input and the results list are configurable to fit your design.

No external search service, no API keys, no extra setup. Search runs on your own published site.

A rewrite under the hood

The CMS core in v2 has been rewritten from scratch. The visible change for most users is speed — pages load faster, the Collection component renders large content lists noticeably quicker, and filtering and pagination feel smoother on larger sites.

Underneath, the codebase is cleaner and better organised, which means future releases should land faster than v1's release cycle did.

The format is unchanged. Content is still plain Markdown files, portable, and easy to back up or version-control with Git or any other tool. v1 sites upgrade just by installing v2; your content carries straight across with no migration step.

A note on Online Editor Pro

Alongside the free Online Editor, v2 introduces an optional Pro upgrade for the Editor only. The CMS itself remains free in full. Pro adds tools aimed at agencies, teams, and people running larger sites: version history, multiple editor accounts, webhooks, an MCP server, an AI writing assistant, custom content fields, and theming. None of it is required to use the Online Editor; all of it is opt-in.

A separate post going up closer to launch will cover Pro in detail. In the meantime, video walkthroughs of each Pro feature are on the Online Editor page.