[seanwilson]

Is there an open source CMS that people would recommended for use with a static website generator for large websites? Netlify CMS is interesting for example and I love how content changes are versioned in Git.

I like static website generation but don't want to get locked into a proprietary CMS platform.

[gexla]

You can use Wordpress as a headless CMS.

> and I love how content changes are versioned in Git

Developers love themselves some Git, but that's probably not the best content workflow tool for people who will write copy which actually accomplishes the goals of the site (like making sales.) Why do developers in this thread act as if it's going to be developers writing the content?

[seanwilson]

> Developers love themselves some Git, but that's probably not the best content workflow tool for people who will write copy which actually accomplishes the goals of the site (like making sales.) Why do developers in this thread act as if it's going to be developers writing the content?

I never said to expose sales people to Git. Have you tried Netlify CMS? All it's doing is giving non-technical users a pretty frontend to edit posts/pages that are stored as Markdown files on GitHub, so it's user-friendly + developer friendly. Check out the video: https://www.netlifycms.org/

Migrating static sites where the content + theme are all stored in Git is a dream compared to WordPress. A lot of WordPress sites aren't even under source control (with automatic security updates live updating the CMS code with no diffs if something goes wrong or it gets hacked), and because some state is stored in the database and other state stored is in the file system, it makes migrations, upgrades and rollbacks overly complicated.

You could use WordPress as a headless CMS, but you've still got to have a plan for how you're going to backups, rollbacks and deploys for content + custom editor features.

[gexla]

You mentioned that content changes are versioned in Git using the Netlify workflow. Why would that be useful if not for being part of an editor workflow? If it's not part of the editor workflow, is it part of the development workflow? What are we comparing this to? versioning in Google Docs? MySQL? How is it something I should "love?"

> Migrating static sites where the content + theme are all stored in Git is a dream compared to WordPress.

Wordpress (and similar) site migration has been a well solved problem for quite some time. Sure, there might be easier ways to do migration but that's a long ways down my list of things to worry about when choosing my tooling. Ease of migration isn't much of a consideration.

> A lot of WordPress sites aren't even under source control...

A lot of Wordpress sites are a dumpster fire actively attacking the internet. That's not the sites I build and manage. I'll create static websites for my own usage, but not for buyers of my services.

Any headless CMS service (as opposed to self hosted) is really just an option of interfaces on the market. Of the things which matter to buyers, that interface is everything on the back-end (the site as a whole has more important goals.) The buyer doesn't care about ease of migration, how content is stored, etc. Only developers care about these things. So, let's talk about what buyers want, not developers.

If a X headless CMS service can provide the best UI for the buyer, then that's what everyone should default to. If not, then all other bullet points don't matter.

[seanwilson]

You can try a live demo of Netlify CMS here to get a feel for the editor workflow: https://cms-demo.netlify.com/#/workflow

All state is stored in Git and Netlify CMS is just a client-side JS script that talks directly to GitHub. It's an interesting approach that suits some projects. Don't read into this comment more than that.

[mobilefriendly]

Drupal has modernized (its highly modular with OO PHP) and is an excellent enterprise CMS. It can be implemented as the headless backend: https://www.gatsbyjs.com/guides/drupal/

[lwhi]

Currently using Drupal 8 with a decoupled Next.js frontend .. works very well. Seem less upgrade to Drupal 9. Advanced CMS editing tools, moderation tools, media management, componentised content modules, content library, all content exposed via JSON:API, multilingual by default .. built on Symfony.

To say it's more complex than WP is true .. but to completely discount it, is foolish.

[chiefalchemist]

I belive that with GatsbyJS you can your a repo + markdown as a "backend".

[seanwilson]

Does Gatsby build fast enough for a large site though? I find their business model strange if I'm understanding it correctly - faster builds are a paid feature.

I also don't understand the hype. I think it's just good marketing, people don't know the alternatives, and it uses React.

I usually side with Hugo because it's so fast and simple to get running. I don't love the template language but the majority of sites don't need complex template logic anyway.

[hallman76]

Fast enough depends on your needs. I work on a Gatsby site that builds ~9k pages in ~9 minutes in AWS CodeBuild. We're looking forward to implementing incremental builds at some point, but our current build time is acceptable.

I see Gatsby similar to Django in that it has "batteries included" for building a modern interactive site. It suits our needs quite well and I'm really happy with it.

[seanwilson]

For what it's worth, a quick test of Hugo with 10K posts with a minimal theme takes 40 seconds to build. Speed isn't everything but x10 faster is nice.

[chiefalchemist]

Not sure. My impression is Gatsby is solid but still growing, the tech still evolving. So today might not be the same answer next month.

[seanwilson]

This sounds like the hype I mentioned earlier if I'm honest. I'd rather just use Hugo today and know most small sites I make are going to build in less than a second without having to pay extra.

[chiefalchemist]

It's not static, pun intended. The Gatsby of 6 or 12 months ago is not the Gatsby of today. Buzz? Maybe. But buzz !== hype.

[todotask]

Other than versioning, are there important features we could benefits?