[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 :)