[icebraining]

It has 18 lines of configuration. The actual CMS (cms.js/css) has almost 2M characters.

The demos is cute and all, but not really different from the many other existing CMSs for static site generators.

That said, I do think it's good we're finally having some options for this model besides Movable Type, which has been around for 18 years, but which is too expensive for the needs of many.

[erquhart]

Post author here: There's definitely no shortage of options - the CMS exists to fill a very specific trifecta that we believe are critical for modern static development. It is:

1. Git based, which is how devs are working increasingly

2. Highly extensible, from backends to editor plugins

3. It's open source

As a bonus, it's very easy to hack on - just a single page app written in React.

[mcguire]

"...just a single page app written in React."

Having been involved in a few single page apps, I'd like to point out that JavaScript is a Turing complete programming language. There is no "just" about it. It may or may not be easy to work with, but the fact that it is a single page app or that it is React, had nothing to do with the matter.

After all, php is "just a web page with some templating commands" (and look at where that gets you).

Also, when you are enjoying that warm feeling from being "serverless", bear in mind that building something you value around someone else's service, especially if you aren't paying them for the privilege, may not be a spectacular idea.

This message brought to you by the American Society of Cynics. Pointing out that your glass is half empty is our calling.

[prophesi]

Uhh, what? It being written as a single-page React Javascript app means that if you're a web dev with React under your belt, then it won't be tough for you to jump in and extend the CMS code[1]. And it's licensed under MIT, so you can fork and do what you will with it.

And you don't have to use Netlify's service with their Netlify-CMS. Their step-by-step guide uses it, but that's only because they obviously want to promote their service[2] and it's the easiest way to get it all set up. You'd otherwise just host the CMS page at /admin of your site and configure a webhook to deploy your site on a push event.

[1] Unless your point is just that programming is hard. Which is obviously true.

[2] Though their service is pretty shweet as they put your assets on cloudflare and handle the webhooks for you.

[_fool]

Disclaimer: I work for Netlify.

Minor correction to your 2nd footnote: We put your assets on our CDN - some of which is served by amazon's Cloudfront. We don't use Cloudflare's services to run our CDN :)

[erquhart]

Yep, the source of a widely useful CMS will always be non trivial - but you have to build your site inside of a traditional CMS, where it lives on a server. Netlify CMS is a page on your site that creates and edits markdown and data files. The difference is real :)

[WhitneyLand]

The title of your your post crosses the boundary from promotion/hype to just being a bald face lie. Would you consider changing it?

The project is great, it’s really nice contribution, and I’ve had good experiences with netlify as well. No reason to leak brand faith over stuff like this.

>>A Complete CMS with No Server and 18 Lines of Code

[erquhart]

I definitely weighed that out, and I appreciate you mentioning it. I settled on this title because it's accurate for the implementor, and because folks are having a hard time understanding the benefit compared to a large solution like WordPress, as evidenced in this thread.

You can literally tack this CMS onto your existing site with a trivial amount of (configuration) code. You cannot in any sense do that with a traditional CMS. I'd call it tongue in cheek for sure, but I don't agree that it's a lie. Just a matter of perspective. Glad you like the project!

[detaro]

> because folks are having a hard time understanding the benefit compared to a large solution like WordPress, as evidenced in this thread.

So apparently the title failed to communicate this correctly. (IMHO, you should present it as a editing frontend or a backend UI or ... that's used in combination with other tools and services to form a CMS)

[WhitneyLand]

>>a trivial amount of (configuration) code

It’s not a matter of perspective given the target audience. Developers don’t think that doing something in “x lines of code” means configuration files.

It’s intentionally misleading, and that fact that you double down on it after it’s mentioned reflects on the company.

I’m not saying it an easy distinction to draw, in fact often it’s incredibly difficult and that’s why marketing claims have such wide legal latitude.

It’s just that in this case, given the foreseeable audience interpretation, and given the audience is known to have a penchant for unvarnished, straight talk about technology, it’s not a good decision for your company.

Startups come out of the gate attempting climbing mount everest. Given the difficultly, unforced tactical errors really need to be avoided, and corrected when pointed out.

[twiss]

Yeah, I was also hoping for a CMS in 18 lines of code. You could probably just about build something useful if you get opinionated enough, such as sending requests to https://cdn.rawgit.com, parsing Markdown (if you don't count libraries -- otherwise, cheat by using GitHub's Markdown API :)) and wrapping it in an html file (possibly also from rawgit).

Or, you could build a CMS around https://stackedit.io. It can apparently sync with CouchDB.

[013a]

And its powered by Node and V8, so we've got another 500,000 lines of code there. Ah, but those are actually written in C++, so we need LLVM, another million lines there. And a rendering engine for the frontend, Chrome, Firefox, etc. Microcode in the processor responsible for executing assembly instructions?

So, what number do we actually care about? You chose to be pedantic and you didn't go far enough. How about, instead, we care more about how much I have to write to achieve what they say I can; 18 lines.

[icebraining]

There's nothing pedantic about what I wrote. When people say software X has Y lines of code, they're always talking about the code written specifically for that program.

In fact, if it was clear that it was configuration lines, it wouldn't be a good title, because it's not particularly impressive: for example in Wordpress you just need to change 4 lines of wp-config.php to start using it.

[erquhart]

Odd that this and other comments in favor of the article are being systematically down voted.

[yodon]

Please don’t run around seeing conspiracies when a more likely explanation is that there are non-trivial numbers of people who hold opinions different from what you expect.

[erquhart]

Shouldn't have said "systematic", didn't mean to insinuate a collaborative effort. Silently down voting is what I'm pointing out, as it tends to be non constructive, I don't think I'll ever get used to that.

That said, my comment was ultimately pointless and I regret making it, agreed.