With the recent OE Global Conference still fresh, I have just released a series of updates to my fully open-source Grav CMS projects – free course and open publishing sites that now share many of the features of my Grav Premium Helios projects.
Open Course Hub 2 (and Open MultiCourse Hub 2) has a new 2026 Modern look, with Helios-style callouts, card-style boxes, a tinted NavBar and optional Dark Mode. It’s also now organised by modules, as in Grav Helios Course Hub: a card for each module, and a module list beside every page showing that page’s sections, with Previous and Next buttons. The Home page links straight to this week’s and next week’s modules, there’s an optional course blog with tags and archives, and the same course content shortcodes as Helios (learning objectives, key takeaways, reflections, and more). Pages also embed cleanly in an LMS with ?embedded=true.
Open Publishing Space 2, for open guides and textbooks alongside a blog, now works much like Grav Helios Open Reader. Guides are organised into sections and pages, with search that groups results and highlights your words, and print styles. Embedded guide pages and blog posts leave out the site navigation.
Perfect for OER: with Grav 2, Open Publishing Space can now give you the Markdown of any displayed page. A “This page as Markdown” link below each page gets that page’s Markdown, and a full text link gives a whole guide as one Markdown file, ready to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. Talk about being open! And remember, all content is stored in future-friendly plain text files using Markdown formatting – no database required.
Both can also start from existing content, using the converters I shared here in July – see a Common Cartridge course imported into Open Course Hub and a Pressbooks book imported into Open Publishing Space.
Downloads & GitHub Repos:
Is anyone thinking about moving a course out of their LMS, or a book out of Pressbooks, into something more open and portable? I’d love to hear what would make these projects useful in your context.
Feedback and questions welcome, and thanks to the respective authors for sharing their work in the open!