Development roadmap

We're not standing still! Citadel is an active project with big plans and big improvements going on behind the scenes. But it isn't always apparent, from just looking at the current releases, what we're up to. So here's a peek at some highlights from our development roadmap.

The new WebCit

Status: now available!

The vast majority of our development effort over the last two years has gone towards a complete overhaul of our WebCit user interface. This is a fully REST/DAV implementation with a modern single-page user interface. Here is an example of the "forum" app:

And here's the "mail" app:

Here's the new "calendar" app:

We think you'll be very pleased!

Datastore improvements

Status: Complete and now in production

Site operators have requested support for storage backends beyond Berkeley DB. This demand stems partly from a desire to distance the open-source community from Oracle following its acquisition of Sleepycat Software and subsequent licensing changes. Additionally, some operators have reported technical difficulties with the current implementation.

Citadel began with flat files in 1981, then changed to GDBM in 1998 and added Berkeley DB in 2002. Our server architecture allows swappable back ends, and in 2026 we completed support for LMDB. It is now the default store for new sites, and makes excellent use of storage. The Berkeley DB store will remain available for the foreseeable future to keep existing sites running.

Fediverse integration

Status: early planning stages

We envision a future where Citadel sites can optionally become first class nodes on distributed/federated networks. This will allow public sites to reach a wider audience and improve the state of the independent and sovereign web. Early plans involved ActivityPub, but the distributed censorship in effect on that network has led us to consider Nostr instead. If you're interested in this type of thing, log in and get involved!