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Jamstacked Issue 76

Netlify CMS becomes Decap CMS

Published: Mar 9, 2023

Your update on all things Jamstack
 

#​76 — March 9, 2023
✦ web version

Netlify CMS has been a staple of the Jamstack ecosystem since it was released in 2017. It was agnostic of your static site generator (SSG), so it could fit into any project. It relied on files in a Git repository, meaning it wasn't just free and open source, but required no cost to host/maintain. Finally, it was simple, both in terms of interface and implementation, making it perfect for many smaller projects.

Unfortunately, the project seemed to languish in recent years without any major updates. So, it's really nice to see that Netlify has decided, rather than kill it or allow it to languish into full obsolescence, to hand off the reigns and, potentially, give it new life. This may be a step taken later than some users would have liked, but it's still the right move, in my opinion.

Brian Rinaldi

↘︎ What's good

Next.js 13.2
The latest version of Next.js includes updates to the beta App Router, a new metadata API for SEO, new route handlers for API routes when using the App Router, support for MDX with server components and more. Also new in Next.js 13.2 is a beta of Next Cache that integrates with Vercel's new Cache API that supports caching only parts of your app, while dynamically rendering the rest.

Next.js

Rendering Patterns for Web Apps: Server-Side, Client-Side, & SSG Explained
A good explainer of the different options available in many Jamstack frameworks. It even dives into differed rendering (ISR), islands and streaming SSR as well as the pros and cons of each rendering method.

Germán Cocca

Astro JS Framework: A Practical Guide To Building Faster Websites
An extensive walkthrough of Astro that covers all the topics you’ll need to get you started.

Mojtaba Seyedi

✂︎ Tools, Resources & More...

  • Netlify CMS to Become Decap CMS: What You Need to Know – Netlify has handed off management of its open source CMS to PM, an agency partner of Netlify. While there is no major update to the CMS yet as far as I can tell, this is hopefully good news to folks who use it as it hadn't seen major updates in quite a long time.
  • Upgrading to Eleventy 2.0.0 – While the process doesn't seem particularly difficult, this step-by-step guide offers some guidance and covers some potential stumbling blocks.
  • Netlify Rebrand – Netlify launched an entirely new logo that they call the Netlify Spark.
  • Astro Rebrand – Astro launched a new look to their brand and site as well as refinements to their logo.

❖ TIDBITS

Strapi Cloud is Now Available
Strapi is an open-source headless CMS and Strapi Cloud is the managed and hosted version of this service. A unique feature of Strapi Cloud is that, while it provides a database, CDN and email service, each of these is customizable if you’d like to bring your own.

Strapi

Eleventy Collection Schemas
Collections are a group of content with similar traits (ex. blog posts). Collection Schemas is plugin that can enforce a typed frontmatter schema for templates within an Eleventy collection.

Stephanie Eckles

Static Site Generator Visions, Roadmaps, & Trajectories: What to Watch in 2023
A look at the roadmaps for upcoming releases of Astro, Eleventy, Jekyll, Hugo, Next.js, Nuxt and Bridgetown.

David Large

Moving From Vue 1 To Vue 2 To Vue 3: A Case Study Of Migrating A Headless CMS System
This is a deep dive into strategies for handling large migrations within long term projects, in this case around the updating the frontend framework for Storyblok.

Elisabeth Wieser-Linhart

The Dark Side of Next.js
The title makes this sound far more ominous than it is. Basically, these are some important stumbling blocks you may encounter on large scale Next.js applications along with potential solutions for them.

József Miskolczy

Thanks for reading. — Brian