Serendipity
Serendipity (s9y) is a highly extensible and customizable PHP blog engine using Smarty templating.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 5 commits in the last 90 days, latest release 2.6.1 (Jul 2026).
Comparisons in Blogging Platforms: WordPress.com alternatives.
At a glance
Serendipity quick facts
- Health score
- 50/100 SLOWING
- Stars
- 229
- Last commit
- 2 months ago (Sep 2026)
- Latest release
- 2.6.1, Jul 2026
- Licence
- BSD-3-Clause
Top alternatives to Serendipity
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Serendipity is a PHP-powered weblog engine that gives the user an easy way to maintain a blog. While the default package is designed for the casual blogger, Serendipity offers an expandable framework with the power for professional applications."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Serendipity scores 50/100, #8 of 15 in Blogging Platforms: 5 commits in the last 90 days earn 5.8 of 35 points, the latest release (2.6.1, 3 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 229 stars add 9.4 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the slowing band (40 to 69). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 29.2 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 5.8 / 35
5 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
2.6.1 released 3 months ago
- Stars 9.4 / 20
229 stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 5
- Last 90 days
- 50
- Last 12 months
- 2 months ago
- Last push
Ranked #8 of 15 tools in Blogging Platforms by health , between Chyrp Lite (#7) and PluXml (#9) .
Details
| Licence | BSD-3-Clause |
| Platforms | PHP |
| Latest release | 2.6.1 · 3 months ago |
| Stars | 229 |
| Open issues | 34 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | s9y/serendipity ↗ |
Serendipity vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a category with Serendipity (Blogging Platforms), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| fx | 90 | 335 | MIT | 5 days ago |
| WriteFreely | 85 | 5.3k | AGPL-3.0 | 4 days ago |
| Chyrp Lite | 70 | 498 | BSD-3-Clause | 3 days ago |
| Serendipity (this tool) | 50 | 229 | BSD-3-Clause | 2 months ago |
| PluXml | 46 | 233 | GPL-3.0 | 1 month ago |
| HTMLy | 39 | 1.4k | GPL-2.0 | 9 months ago |
Serendipity: common questions
Is Serendipity still maintained?
Serendipity had 5 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 2 months ago; the latest tagged release, 2.6.1, is from 3 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.