Questions, answered

A self-hosted blogging CMS that can plan, write, illustrate, publish and grow a blog for you with AI, from a single keyword. It's built in plain PHP with a static page cache, so the finished site stays extremely fast. Every AI step can also be done by hand.

Yes, that's what the Niche Finder is for. Name a few niches you're curious about (or choose "Surprise me"), plus your country, the time you have and how you'd like to earn. It scores up to 10 niche ideas, narrows the best to a sub-niche a new blog can win, researches hundreds of real Google searches and writes a niche report. One click then builds the blog from it. See how it works.

Yes. The AI works in the admin and in background jobs. Visitors are served cached HTML straight from Apache, with no PHP or database work on most requests, and images are responsive WebP.

Yes. Choose Autopilot when you build a plan and articles are written, illustrated and published on your schedule. Add one cron job and it keeps going while your browser is closed. Later, Grow this site plans more articles and the Growth page suggests which to refresh.

Choose Co-pilot: every article is written straight away and kept in Pending, and nothing goes live until you publish it. (Co-pilot can also publish each article as soon as it's written, if you prefer.) Or write everything yourself with the AI editing tools, or with AI switched off.

Yes. Each install runs one site. Pro covers 5 sites and Developer unlimited sites if you run several blogs.

Anthropic Claude (recommended for the best writing), Google Gemini and DeepSeek. You only need one key. Add more and fastCMS picks a suitable model for each job.

You pay the provider directly. A 2,000-word article costs under $0.01 on budget models, about $0.07 with Claude Sonnet and about $0.14 with Claude Opus. Batch writing with Claude halves the writing cost. AI images on fal.ai cost roughly $0.003 to $0.04 each; stock photos are free.

Yes. In the Niche Finder, click Save for later on any niche idea or sub-niche that would complement the one you build. Once your blog is live, AI Autopilot → Grow this site → Research new keywords first researches a saved niche (or any topic you type) and plans articles that fit your existing categories, adding a new one only where needed. You review the plan before anything is written. See the Autopilot guide.

Open AI Autopilot → Grow this site. Fill one category researches real Google searches for one of your categories and offers about twice as many article ideas as you asked for, so you pick which get written. Find new categories suggests new categories that suit your site and labels each by how much people search for it. Category ideas cost a few cents; researching a category's articles costs about $0.35 with Claude Opus, and nothing is written until you choose. See the Autopilot guide.

It reads the suggestions Google shows as people type, expanding short searches in your sub-niche with question words, modifiers and every letter of the alphabet, which usually finds a few hundred real searches. That part is free. Your AI then scores the niches, groups the searches into articles and writes the report: about $0.70 for a whole research with Claude Opus, shown before you start and counted in your monthly AI budget.

No. There's a monthly budget (new sites start at $10). When spending reaches it, AI stops until next month. Every call and its estimated cost is listed in AI Activity.

You review every plan before anything is written. After a build you can Undo this plan, and restore points from the last 30 days put your articles, pages, images and site name back.

fastCMS plans topical maps with pillar guides and internal links, writes search titles and descriptions, and refreshes articles using the searches they actually appear for in Google and Bing. Quality still matters: review, add your own experience and use the house style box to set tone and rules.

Yes. Connect Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools or both on the Growth page, and switch between them or add them together. Turn on IndexNow and Bing hears about new and updated articles the moment you publish. See the Growth guide.

PHP 8.2 or newer on Apache or LiteSpeed, which almost every cPanel host provides. There's no database to set up: fastCMS uses a single SQLite file. Not sure which host? fastCMS runs well on Namecheap shared hosting (affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you); choose PHP 8.3 in cPanel before you install.

Yes. fastCMS runs on your own hosting at your own address, like yourblog.com. Not got one yet? Our free blog name generator suggests names and checks which are free, and you can register yours at Namecheap (affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you) or any registrar.

Unzip, upload everything (including the hidden .htaccess files) to your web folder, open your site and fill in the installer. It checks your server and tells you exactly what to fix if something is missing. See the quick start.

It's recommended, not required. Without one, articles are written while an admin page is open. With one, writing, scheduled publishing and Google and Bing updates run day and night.

The new fastCMS is a fresh install rather than an in-place upgrade. Contact us if you'd like help moving your version 1 articles across.

Add your licence key on the Updates page. New versions install with one click: the download is checksum-verified, your code and database are backed up first, and if anything fails the previous version is put back automatically.

Starter includes 6 months of updates and support, Pro 12 months, and Developer lifetime updates, counted from the date you buy.

Your site keeps working exactly as before. The licence only unlocks updates. Contact us to renew.

Yes. Copy a theme folder to a new name and edit the copy, so updates never overwrite your changes.