9 ms·

Netlify CMS – An open-source CMS for Git workflows

297 points by corny 10y ago

Myztiq 10y ago
Seems like a neat idea, I have not yet found a good example of the output that this generates on github. I've used prismic.io and other such systems in the past, all wonderful. I'm glad to see this is evolving in other ways.
- benaiah 10y ago
  The output is very flexible - you can define entry types as collections of "widgets", which would include stuff like a title, a cover image, a markdown body, etc. It's designed so you can use it as a CMS for almost any static site generator by defining how your data looks in the config - see https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/config.yml https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/c... for an example config (this is a configuration for the in-memory, non-persistent backend which we use for testing and demonstration).
rogerjin12 10y ago
I work at buttercms.com and we are huge fans of Netlify and how easy they've made hosting static websites and SPAs. This CMS looks awesome and it is clever how it hooks into Github.
steffoz 10y ago
Thanks for citing DatoCMS, Netlify, appreciate it :) Really love what these guys are trying to build: critical mass over static websites. That's what we need.
- michaelmior 10y ago
  +1 for DatoCMS! For simple use cases it works great and combined with Netlify makes for a great way to deploy simple static sites. Although I must say I'm pretty excited about Netlify CMS :)
  - steffoz 10y ago
    Thank you michael :)
laktek 10y ago
Pretty interesting and this is the first time I came across the term JAMStack (a concept I always had trouble in explaining to other developers). Rendering content blocks in server and then further enhancing them on client-side using a JSON API can be how most sites will be built in future (especially, with ServiceWorkers we would be able to create more fine-grained offline experience too). I'm also currently working on a project on similar lines, check out the initial blog post for more details - http://www.laktek.com/2016/11/29/introducing-pragma/ http://www.laktek.com/2016/11/29/introducing-pragma/ Edit: also loved the idea of a kanban board for edit-review-publish process. Might steal that idea ;)
- brianllamar 10y ago
  Consider adding your project a list of headless cms's. I am hoping to expand the category and spread the JAM. https://headlesscms.org/ https://headlesscms.org/
radiospiel 10y ago
sorry, what exactly does this? Assuming one is looking for a CMS, the description on the frontpage does not tell me anything. How does it compare to other CMSes? After "Find out more" I know now that it does something with Github, but what exactly? (Also I now know that it has something to do with a JAMstack, whatever that might be.) I am looking around for a smallish CMS, but I got no idea from the introductory pages on whether or not netlify could help me
- benaiah 10y ago
  > sorry, what exactly does this? It's a CMS that works on static sites. Currently it primarily supports GitHub repos for storage, but the plan is to support other alternatives (it already supports pluggable backends, but the GitHub backend is the only one with significant support at this point). > How does it compare to other CMSes? - It doesn't require a database - it works on static files. - It doesn't handle building or serving websites - just editing their content. - It has a built-in editorial workflow, which allows you to manage publishing and reviewing entries in a sophisticated manner (it uses Git repositories to do this, currently through the GitHub API), where "publishing" means pushing to a specific branch - you're free to build and deploy your website with any tooling you want. - It supports arbitrary content types and build tools, by allowing you to describe your content in a config file. - It is itself usable as a simple set of static files - its entire functionality is implemented as a JS application, so there's no server support required to host it beyond serving files. You can also use it as an npm module for more complex workflows (such as adding custom extensions to the CMS). > After "Find out more" I know now that it does something with Github, but what exactly? The current primary backend for Netlify CMS is the GitHub API. This means that it allows you to store your files in a GitHub repo, connect Netlify CMS to it, and it will use that repo to store your changes. A build system could then pull that repo to deploy your site. The CMS itself is entirely build and deploy agnostic.
benaiah 10y ago
I work on this project, and it's been a big day for us - Smashing Magazine just released a preview of its new site[0], which uses Netlify CMS as the admin interface. I'm happy to answer any questions about the project. [0]: https://next.smashingmagazine.com/2017/03/a-little-surprise-is-waiting-for-you-here--meet-the-next-smashing-magazine/ https://next.smashingmagazine.com/2017/03/a-little-surprise-...
- corny 10y ago
  Haven't had a chance to fully try this out but am curious if it's possible to take advantage of Hugo shortcodes through the CMS admin?
  - benaiah 10y ago
    There's no built-in support for Hugo shortcodes that I'm aware of, but you can enter them into posts fine, as there's built-in support for arbitrary Markdown content. Depending on your use case, it might be possible to extend the editor with a new widget to do what you want, as well [0]. Feel free to start an issue at https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ if you're interested further. [0]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/extending.md https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/exte...
- modernerd 10y ago
  Congratulations! This is exciting stuff. I enjoyed reading Smashing Mag's writeup – their new site feels fast, and seeing their integrations with GoCommerce and Algolia makes static hosting much more compelling. Do you have plans to extend this to a “batteries included” platform? At the moment it's one piece of a puzzle; users must still choose and configure their build and deployment pipeline, which puts it out of reach for less technical users. To make static site hosting appealing to a wider audience it feels like a click-and-go platform with themes/plugins may be a good direction to follow. I have used https://www.siteleaf.com/ https://www.siteleaf.com/ in the past and been impressed with the workflow. I'd love to help contribute to an open version that appealed to a wider non-technical audience.
bradgessler 10y ago
This will sound crazy, but I recently deployed a content management workflow for a rails app that mounts a WebDAV drive inside of a staging rails application that's running http://sitepress.cc/ http://sitepress.cc/ (think Middleman in Rails, without all the dependencies) If the marketing team wants to edit something, they mount the content drive, make changes using their text editor of choice, and are able to preview when they hit Save. After they make a bunch of changes and add whatever media an engineer copies the changes off of the drive into a commit and deploys to production. So far it's been working pretty well. The marketing and CS team are all able to edit markdown copy and run it easier through their content editing processes since it's just files. They don't need to learn or care about git. Designers can throw images in the volume without thinking too much about it. Engineering is happy because they control their git history and commits. When it's time to optimize PNGs, compress assets, etc. the engineer can deal with and deploy to product with confidence. We also run rspecs against every single page of content to enforce SEO, branding, etc. Happy to answer questions or write something more detailed about it if others are interested.
- edraferi 10y ago
  That's pretty cool. What are the marketing folks using as a WebDAV client?
  - d_k_f 10y ago
    They way I understood him, they simply mount the WebDAV share using their regular file manager, so Explorer on Windows or Finder on Mac.
  - reacweb 10y ago
    I do it often for my website. The unix command is sshfs remotehost:remote_dir local_dir. How do you do it with windows 10 ?
    - detaro 10y ago
      > The unix command is sshfs remotehost:remote_dir local_dir. That's not WebDAV, but using SSH/SFTP. Requires extra software on windows (either an SFTP client, or if you want the filesystem integration specifically there is a version of sshfs for Windows) Basic WebDAV support is integrated in Windows Explorer, and has been for ages, but there are alternative clients (both paid and free) as well.
boondaburrah 10y ago
I was literally gearing up to build something almost exactly like this this week as my own hackathon project. I needed a blog and I don't wanna do static site generation on command line. I may still do it, but dang, way to take the wind out of my sails. :P
trqx 10y ago
If I follow instructions in the "Try it out"[1] link and click on "Connect to github" I end up having to giving r/w access to ALL of my github repositories. Also, reading the Step by Step guide[2] I'd end up giving r/w access to my public keys as well. Now, I just wake up and maybe I missed something but documentation should make it clearer that you either have to create a dedicated github account, or how to manage permission in a more granular fashion. [1] https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/test-drive/ https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/test-drive/ [2] https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/10/27/a-step-by-step-guide-deploying-a-static-site-or-single-page-app/ https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/10/27/a-step-by-step-guide...
- benaiah 10y ago
  Unfortunately, GitHub's API does not provide per-repo permissions, so in order to read/write to any repo, the CMS has to get permission to read/write to all of them. This is a fundamental limitation of the GitHub API [0] - we'd love to be able to request more fine-grained permissions. This is a pretty frequent complaint about any application built with GitHub's API. The r/w access to public keys is specific to setting up continuous deployment from a GitHub repo to Netlify's static hosting service. You can read more about why Netlify requests those permissions for continuous deployment here: https://www.netlify.com/docs/github-permissions/ https://www.netlify.com/docs/github-permissions/. While Netlify's continuous deployment is (obviously) the deployment strategy we recommend, you can use the CMS for any static site, as it's totally build/deploy agnostic. You can use the CMS to edit your content and then build that content with Hugo and host on a VPS if you wish. You can also use Netlify to host your content without continuous deployment - it supports updating content with both an in-browser interface and a REST API [1]. The CMS is entirely open source, so you're free to inspect or fork the code - you can find the repository at https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ [0]: https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes [1]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/api/ https://www.netlify.com/docs/api/
  - wwalser 10y ago
    I have another question based on the instructions. Why does a Netlify user have to create an oAuth application of their own? > … in order to use the CMS, you’ll need to set up authentication with GitHub. That's the opposite of how oAuth is typically used and I notice that at this point in the process the user has already gone through an oAuth flow when they clicked "Sign in with Github".
deleted 10y ago
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nodesocket 10y ago
I'm looking to create a back office for a consultancy company. Typical data like clients, users, billing, etc. It seems like Netlify CMS would allow me to create custom collections and data types correct? So instead of pages and posts, I'd could have clients, users, invoices, etc.
- benaiah 10y ago
  Yes - the CMS allows you to specify custom content types using the config (example at [0]), which can have a variety of fields. There's a variety of built-in fields, and you can create your own as well [1]. That said, the focus of the CMS team is mostly on online publishing right now - we're trying to make editing static sites accessible enough for everyday users and featureful enough for large publications. I'd love to hear more about your use case and what you were thinking about using Netlify CMS for - you can reply here, raise an issue at https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/, or contact me at ben@netlify.com if you'd like to speak privately. [0]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/config.yml https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/c... [1]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/extending.md https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/exte...
NKCSS 10y ago
Minor nitpick on the screencast; when clicking save, it took 4-6 seconds for it to complete and then load another page? That's not the best way to show of your CMS and instantly makes me fear what will happen if I have a lot of content in there.
- benaiah 10y ago
  Netlify CMS is a single-page app, so the delay you're seeing is the wait for an external API to respond that the entry has saved succesfully - you wouldn't want to leave the page only to find out that your changes weren't saved. When using the in-memory backend (which doesn't persist changes), saving happens with no such delay. Since the delay is almost entirely from the network and external API, it shouldn't get worse with lots of files unless the external API takes longer to respond. Our current primary backend is the GitHub API, which handles lots of files without much change in response time in my experience.
thenomad 10y ago
Looks very cool. Does this only work with Github? Unfortunately that renders it pretty much useless for me (and probably other non-Github users) if so.
- benaiah 10y ago
  Unfortunately GitHub is the only backend we've implemented so far. However, we are planning to support multiple backends, and the CMS is already architectured to do so.
- brianllamar 10y ago
  There is an open issue, if you have any insight in providing other APIs backend https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57 https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57
ranyefet 10y ago
Great idea, definitely going to try it out
deleted 10y ago
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therealmarv 10y ago
So this does not work with gitlab, right?
- benaiah 10y ago
  Not yet - there's an issue [0] for that in the GitHub repository [1]. [0]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57 https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57 [1]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms
gogopuppygogo 10y ago
I've been using Netlify for over a year to host static websites on custom domains and it's been impressive to me. Their control panel and tight git integration makes for a powerful combination. Not to mention that they also introduced a free tier for custom domains that I'm now using for some sites. This is exciting to see them work on. I'm disappointed to see that they aren't focusing on designers though. Something like RespondCMS for Netlify hosting would be a superior combo.
polymath21 10y ago
How does this compare to Contentful? I've been trying to combine their headless CMS with Middleman but it hasn't been that easy to use, although the experience I'm trying to create is non-standard (imagine a normal blog post but with cards inserted throughout). Plus, the cheapest paid plan is $249/month which is really hefty when compared to the competition. Their free tier does give you a good amount of features though and their admin UI is the best. I was planning to deploy my site onto Netlify once done. Wondering if maybe your CMS is a better alternative to Contentful and I should just combine services.
- toddmorey 10y ago
  Contentful is nice and since it's been around longer, it's a bit more baked. However, there's an amazing feature of static sites that are based off of local content (markdown and yaml files, for example): every aspect of your site can live in git. Treating the content like code offers the advantage of being able to easily roll back a website to any one point in time, and I think it generally makes collaboration between designers, coders, and content editors easier. When developing, it's really nice to just create a new branch and work on the content and design all at the same time. The aim of this CMS is to hopefully offer the content editing experience of Contentful without requiring an external dependency, while also keeping all aspects of your site tightly integrated with your git workflow.
  - polymath21 10y ago
    But the whole point of me using Contentful is that a non-developer will have an easy time editing content within Contentful vs. having to set up a local way of accessing those markdown/yml files through a git repo. Or do you somehow abstract that away?
    - redtuesday 10y ago
      Yeah, that would be nice to know, because that is one of the reasons I use Contentful at the moment. The source is on github and triggers Travis if I push changes, which in turn get's the content from Contentful, builds the static site with metalsmith and uploads the site through FTP. Or if the non-developer makes changes on Contentful this triggers Travis as well etc. Works quite nice so far (especially since I didn't need to explain how to optimize the images) but would prefer a open source solution.
inthewoods 10y ago
Surprised in all this that no one has mentioned www.cloudcannon.com - works with Jekyll and allows our marketing group to make live edits on the website while maintaining the whole thing on Github.
m-j-fox 10y ago
Dumb question: what is a CMS?
- 0x27081990 10y ago
  Content management system
roscoebeezie 10y ago
When CMS is not Conversational Monitor System...
matt4077 10y ago
I wish people would actually use open protocols instead of private APIs, at least in cases where both seem to be available. As far as I can see, the only feature this needs that only github provides is pull requests – omitting those would still leave you with a useful CMS, and the information could also be communicated in, for example, branch names. That way, you could conceivably use any client you want to work on the repo. So instead of implementing Gitlab next, why not make it work with git? This situation reminds me of email clients and libraries, many of whom now use private APIs of a bunch of providers instead of SMTL and IMAP.
yellowboxtenant 10y ago
How does user management work?

297 points by corny 10y ago

Seems like a neat idea, I have not yet found a good example of the output that this generates on github. I've used prismic.io and other such systems in the past, all wonderful. I'm glad to see this is evolving in other ways.

benaiah 10y ago
The output is very flexible - you can define entry types as collections of "widgets", which would include stuff like a title, a cover image, a markdown body, etc. It's designed so you can use it as a CMS for almost any static site generator by defining how your data looks in the config - see https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/config.yml https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/c... for an example config (this is a configuration for the in-memory, non-persistent backend which we use for testing and demonstration).

rogerjin12 10y ago

I work at buttercms.com and we are huge fans of Netlify and how easy they've made hosting static websites and SPAs. This CMS looks awesome and it is clever how it hooks into Github.

steffoz 10y ago

Thanks for citing DatoCMS, Netlify, appreciate it :) Really love what these guys are trying to build: critical mass over static websites. That's what we need.

michaelmior 10y ago
+1 for DatoCMS! For simple use cases it works great and combined with Netlify makes for a great way to deploy simple static sites. Although I must say I'm pretty excited about Netlify CMS :)
- steffoz 10y ago
  Thank you michael :)

laktek 10y ago

Pretty interesting and this is the first time I came across the term JAMStack (a concept I always had trouble in explaining to other developers). Rendering content blocks in server and then further enhancing them on client-side using a JSON API can be how most sites will be built in future (especially, with ServiceWorkers we would be able to create more fine-grained offline experience too). I'm also currently working on a project on similar lines, check out the initial blog post for more details - http://www.laktek.com/2016/11/29/introducing-pragma/ http://www.laktek.com/2016/11/29/introducing-pragma/ Edit: also loved the idea of a kanban board for edit-review-publish process. Might steal that idea ;)

brianllamar 10y ago
Consider adding your project a list of headless cms's. I am hoping to expand the category and spread the JAM. https://headlesscms.org/ https://headlesscms.org/

radiospiel 10y ago

sorry, what exactly does this? Assuming one is looking for a CMS, the description on the frontpage does not tell me anything. How does it compare to other CMSes? After "Find out more" I know now that it does something with Github, but what exactly? (Also I now know that it has something to do with a JAMstack, whatever that might be.) I am looking around for a smallish CMS, but I got no idea from the introductory pages on whether or not netlify could help me

benaiah 10y ago
> sorry, what exactly does this? It's a CMS that works on static sites. Currently it primarily supports GitHub repos for storage, but the plan is to support other alternatives (it already supports pluggable backends, but the GitHub backend is the only one with significant support at this point). > How does it compare to other CMSes? - It doesn't require a database - it works on static files. - It doesn't handle building or serving websites - just editing their content. - It has a built-in editorial workflow, which allows you to manage publishing and reviewing entries in a sophisticated manner (it uses Git repositories to do this, currently through the GitHub API), where "publishing" means pushing to a specific branch - you're free to build and deploy your website with any tooling you want. - It supports arbitrary content types and build tools, by allowing you to describe your content in a config file. - It is itself usable as a simple set of static files - its entire functionality is implemented as a JS application, so there's no server support required to host it beyond serving files. You can also use it as an npm module for more complex workflows (such as adding custom extensions to the CMS). > After "Find out more" I know now that it does something with Github, but what exactly? The current primary backend for Netlify CMS is the GitHub API. This means that it allows you to store your files in a GitHub repo, connect Netlify CMS to it, and it will use that repo to store your changes. A build system could then pull that repo to deploy your site. The CMS itself is entirely build and deploy agnostic.

benaiah 10y ago

I work on this project, and it's been a big day for us - Smashing Magazine just released a preview of its new site[0], which uses Netlify CMS as the admin interface. I'm happy to answer any questions about the project. [0]: https://next.smashingmagazine.com/2017/03/a-little-surprise-is-waiting-for-you-here--meet-the-next-smashing-magazine/ https://next.smashingmagazine.com/2017/03/a-little-surprise-...

corny 10y ago
Haven't had a chance to fully try this out but am curious if it's possible to take advantage of Hugo shortcodes through the CMS admin?
- benaiah 10y ago
  There's no built-in support for Hugo shortcodes that I'm aware of, but you can enter them into posts fine, as there's built-in support for arbitrary Markdown content. Depending on your use case, it might be possible to extend the editor with a new widget to do what you want, as well [0]. Feel free to start an issue at https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ if you're interested further. [0]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/extending.md https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/exte...
modernerd 10y ago
Congratulations! This is exciting stuff. I enjoyed reading Smashing Mag's writeup – their new site feels fast, and seeing their integrations with GoCommerce and Algolia makes static hosting much more compelling. Do you have plans to extend this to a “batteries included” platform? At the moment it's one piece of a puzzle; users must still choose and configure their build and deployment pipeline, which puts it out of reach for less technical users. To make static site hosting appealing to a wider audience it feels like a click-and-go platform with themes/plugins may be a good direction to follow. I have used https://www.siteleaf.com/ https://www.siteleaf.com/ in the past and been impressed with the workflow. I'd love to help contribute to an open version that appealed to a wider non-technical audience.

bradgessler 10y ago

This will sound crazy, but I recently deployed a content management workflow for a rails app that mounts a WebDAV drive inside of a staging rails application that's running http://sitepress.cc/ http://sitepress.cc/ (think Middleman in Rails, without all the dependencies) If the marketing team wants to edit something, they mount the content drive, make changes using their text editor of choice, and are able to preview when they hit Save. After they make a bunch of changes and add whatever media an engineer copies the changes off of the drive into a commit and deploys to production. So far it's been working pretty well. The marketing and CS team are all able to edit markdown copy and run it easier through their content editing processes since it's just files. They don't need to learn or care about git. Designers can throw images in the volume without thinking too much about it. Engineering is happy because they control their git history and commits. When it's time to optimize PNGs, compress assets, etc. the engineer can deal with and deploy to product with confidence. We also run rspecs against every single page of content to enforce SEO, branding, etc. Happy to answer questions or write something more detailed about it if others are interested.

edraferi 10y ago
That's pretty cool. What are the marketing folks using as a WebDAV client?
- d_k_f 10y ago
  They way I understood him, they simply mount the WebDAV share using their regular file manager, so Explorer on Windows or Finder on Mac.
- reacweb 10y ago
  I do it often for my website. The unix command is sshfs remotehost:remote_dir local_dir. How do you do it with windows 10 ?
  - detaro 10y ago
    > The unix command is sshfs remotehost:remote_dir local_dir. That's not WebDAV, but using SSH/SFTP. Requires extra software on windows (either an SFTP client, or if you want the filesystem integration specifically there is a version of sshfs for Windows) Basic WebDAV support is integrated in Windows Explorer, and has been for ages, but there are alternative clients (both paid and free) as well.

boondaburrah 10y ago

I was literally gearing up to build something almost exactly like this this week as my own hackathon project. I needed a blog and I don't wanna do static site generation on command line. I may still do it, but dang, way to take the wind out of my sails. :P

trqx 10y ago

If I follow instructions in the "Try it out"[1] link and click on "Connect to github" I end up having to giving r/w access to ALL of my github repositories. Also, reading the Step by Step guide[2] I'd end up giving r/w access to my public keys as well. Now, I just wake up and maybe I missed something but documentation should make it clearer that you either have to create a dedicated github account, or how to manage permission in a more granular fashion. [1] https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/test-drive/ https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/test-drive/ [2] https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/10/27/a-step-by-step-guide-deploying-a-static-site-or-single-page-app/ https://www.netlify.com/blog/2016/10/27/a-step-by-step-guide...

benaiah 10y ago
Unfortunately, GitHub's API does not provide per-repo permissions, so in order to read/write to any repo, the CMS has to get permission to read/write to all of them. This is a fundamental limitation of the GitHub API [0] - we'd love to be able to request more fine-grained permissions. This is a pretty frequent complaint about any application built with GitHub's API. The r/w access to public keys is specific to setting up continuous deployment from a GitHub repo to Netlify's static hosting service. You can read more about why Netlify requests those permissions for continuous deployment here: https://www.netlify.com/docs/github-permissions/ https://www.netlify.com/docs/github-permissions/. While Netlify's continuous deployment is (obviously) the deployment strategy we recommend, you can use the CMS for any static site, as it's totally build/deploy agnostic. You can use the CMS to edit your content and then build that content with Hugo and host on a VPS if you wish. You can also use Netlify to host your content without continuous deployment - it supports updating content with both an in-browser interface and a REST API [1]. The CMS is entirely open source, so you're free to inspect or fork the code - you can find the repository at https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ [0]: https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes [1]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/api/ https://www.netlify.com/docs/api/
- wwalser 10y ago
  I have another question based on the instructions. Why does a Netlify user have to create an oAuth application of their own? > … in order to use the CMS, you’ll need to set up authentication with GitHub. That's the opposite of how oAuth is typically used and I notice that at this point in the process the user has already gone through an oAuth flow when they clicked "Sign in with Github".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nodesocket 10y ago

I'm looking to create a back office for a consultancy company. Typical data like clients, users, billing, etc. It seems like Netlify CMS would allow me to create custom collections and data types correct? So instead of pages and posts, I'd could have clients, users, invoices, etc.

benaiah 10y ago
Yes - the CMS allows you to specify custom content types using the config (example at [0]), which can have a variety of fields. There's a variety of built-in fields, and you can create your own as well [1]. That said, the focus of the CMS team is mostly on online publishing right now - we're trying to make editing static sites accessible enough for everyday users and featureful enough for large publications. I'd love to hear more about your use case and what you were thinking about using Netlify CMS for - you can reply here, raise an issue at https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/ https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/, or contact me at ben@netlify.com if you'd like to speak privately. [0]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/config.yml https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/example/c... [1]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/extending.md https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/master/docs/exte...

NKCSS 10y ago

Minor nitpick on the screencast; when clicking save, it took 4-6 seconds for it to complete and then load another page? That's not the best way to show of your CMS and instantly makes me fear what will happen if I have a lot of content in there.

benaiah 10y ago
Netlify CMS is a single-page app, so the delay you're seeing is the wait for an external API to respond that the entry has saved succesfully - you wouldn't want to leave the page only to find out that your changes weren't saved. When using the in-memory backend (which doesn't persist changes), saving happens with no such delay. Since the delay is almost entirely from the network and external API, it shouldn't get worse with lots of files unless the external API takes longer to respond. Our current primary backend is the GitHub API, which handles lots of files without much change in response time in my experience.

thenomad 10y ago

Looks very cool. Does this only work with Github? Unfortunately that renders it pretty much useless for me (and probably other non-Github users) if so.

benaiah 10y ago
Unfortunately GitHub is the only backend we've implemented so far. However, we are planning to support multiple backends, and the CMS is already architectured to do so.
brianllamar 10y ago
There is an open issue, if you have any insight in providing other APIs backend https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57 https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57

ranyefet 10y ago

Great idea, definitely going to try it out

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

therealmarv 10y ago

So this does not work with gitlab, right?

benaiah 10y ago
Not yet - there's an issue [0] for that in the GitHub repository [1]. [0]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57 https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/issues/57 [1]: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms

gogopuppygogo 10y ago

I've been using Netlify for over a year to host static websites on custom domains and it's been impressive to me. Their control panel and tight git integration makes for a powerful combination. Not to mention that they also introduced a free tier for custom domains that I'm now using for some sites. This is exciting to see them work on. I'm disappointed to see that they aren't focusing on designers though. Something like RespondCMS for Netlify hosting would be a superior combo.

polymath21 10y ago

How does this compare to Contentful? I've been trying to combine their headless CMS with Middleman but it hasn't been that easy to use, although the experience I'm trying to create is non-standard (imagine a normal blog post but with cards inserted throughout). Plus, the cheapest paid plan is $249/month which is really hefty when compared to the competition. Their free tier does give you a good amount of features though and their admin UI is the best. I was planning to deploy my site onto Netlify once done. Wondering if maybe your CMS is a better alternative to Contentful and I should just combine services.

toddmorey 10y ago
Contentful is nice and since it's been around longer, it's a bit more baked. However, there's an amazing feature of static sites that are based off of local content (markdown and yaml files, for example): every aspect of your site can live in git. Treating the content like code offers the advantage of being able to easily roll back a website to any one point in time, and I think it generally makes collaboration between designers, coders, and content editors easier. When developing, it's really nice to just create a new branch and work on the content and design all at the same time. The aim of this CMS is to hopefully offer the content editing experience of Contentful without requiring an external dependency, while also keeping all aspects of your site tightly integrated with your git workflow.
- polymath21 10y ago
  But the whole point of me using Contentful is that a non-developer will have an easy time editing content within Contentful vs. having to set up a local way of accessing those markdown/yml files through a git repo. Or do you somehow abstract that away?
  - redtuesday 10y ago
    Yeah, that would be nice to know, because that is one of the reasons I use Contentful at the moment. The source is on github and triggers Travis if I push changes, which in turn get's the content from Contentful, builds the static site with metalsmith and uploads the site through FTP. Or if the non-developer makes changes on Contentful this triggers Travis as well etc. Works quite nice so far (especially since I didn't need to explain how to optimize the images) but would prefer a open source solution.

inthewoods 10y ago

Surprised in all this that no one has mentioned www.cloudcannon.com - works with Jekyll and allows our marketing group to make live edits on the website while maintaining the whole thing on Github.

m-j-fox 10y ago

Dumb question: what is a CMS?

0x27081990 10y ago
Content management system

roscoebeezie 10y ago

When CMS is not Conversational Monitor System...

matt4077 10y ago

I wish people would actually use open protocols instead of private APIs, at least in cases where both seem to be available. As far as I can see, the only feature this needs that only github provides is pull requests – omitting those would still leave you with a useful CMS, and the information could also be communicated in, for example, branch names. That way, you could conceivably use any client you want to work on the repo. So instead of implementing Gitlab next, why not make it work with git? This situation reminds me of email clients and libraries, many of whom now use private APIs of a bunch of providers instead of SMTL and IMAP.

yellowboxtenant 10y ago

How does user management work?