Item — HN Reader

A bit of context as there seems to be confusion: building a git-based website with content as markdown / yaml / json / etc is a pretty pleasant way to work. Changes are fast and easy, and branching and rolling back works really well. Git is really good at what it does for both code and content.

The only problem is it typically locks out less-technical contributors, so it's often with a bit of sad resolve that I've then brought Wordpress into the equation—just to empower other editors.

This is an alternative. The Netlify CMS cleverly provides CMS UI that then commits editors' changes via git (with no git knowledge needed), so they look to me just like another contributor. Since content is managed in static files, any participant can use any tool to to participate.

Some developers love Wordpress with it's ecosystem of plugins and capabilities. This is not for them. Other developers would rather not run Wordpress, yet are just looking for a way to bring in other contributors to a web project, working in a compatible workflow. Those devs, I think, will relate to the ideas of this CMS.

2 comments

I still don't fully grasp it. What's the advantage here? Besides the fact that Netlify provides a CDN when you decide to use them(which granted can be very helpful to some people).

I see the appeal against Wordpress. Wordpress is hell to integrate, slow and a security nightmare. But I don't see the advantage compared to, say Kirby.

There's a post somewhere down below saying smashingmagazine moved to netlify from a Rails, Shopify, Kirby mix[1]. "move would need to include solutions for a decoupled CMS, comments engine, eCommerce platform, and member login."

What Netlify provides, reminds me of what parse used to provide. Except that it adds a CMS and targets Web applications with identity[2] etc. They sell a client facing website platform. Good for them. But that's not what the post is about. So yeah, I do find it misleading.

[1]: https://www.netlify.com/blog/2017/11/21/smashing-magazine-is...

[2]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/identity/

Netlify CMS is a self-standing open-source project. We maintain it and are puring a lot of resources into it, because we think it's really important there's a good open-source solution on the market for projects built with static site generators.

However, the CMS itself is not tied to our deployment and automation platform. It can also be setup to work for GitHub pages or self-hosted setups.

The basic idea is that's its an editor friendly content management UI for persisted data stored in a GitHub repository. What you do with that data is up to you.

> The basic idea is that's its an editor friendly content management UI for persisted data stored in a GitHub repository.

Since it was discussed in a different subthread: If you would describe it like that, why isn't something straightforward like that the blog post title?

What you guys are doing is awesome. I don’t understand all the nitpicking going on in this post. Keep doing what you are doing

Does Netlify provide some easy opportunity to create a newsletter with a sign up form? Can services like MailChimp be used with it?

Preface: Netlify is a platform that enables static development, while Netlify CMS is an open source project created by Netlify.

In a broad sense there's nothing that can't work with the CMS - you can integrate a Mailchimp sign up form in your template and never have the CMS touch it. Beyond that, reach out in the spectrum community for help with a specific use case: https://spectrum.chat/netlify-cms