Introduction
Connecting a CMS in Astro is very straightforward. See the official docs to review various CMS integration methods.
What is a CMS? Headless CMS?
A Content Management System (CMS) is a tool for writing and managing website content. It helps authors create content and manage site assets. Different CMS vendors offer a variety of features such as scheduling, editors, collaborative editing, asset management, and more.
Traditional CMSs handle both content management and content presentation, like WordPress, but Astro only cares about how content is presented. Therefore, it can fetch data from different sources and pair well with a “Headless CMS.” A Headless CMS focuses on content storage and editing and exposes content via APIs, giving developers great freedom in choosing technologies and presentation methods.
This model separates the front end from content management, and its biggest selling point is flexibility. Typically, once a headless CMS is set up, content producers can focus on creating content and defining data schemas while the front end focuses on requesting and rendering that content.
Differences in Headless CMS? Git Based? API Driven?
Headless CMS implementations can be divided into Git Based and API Driven types, differing in how they “store and manage content.” Git Based stores content in a version-control-like system such as Git, with a simple and straightforward structure. API Driven sets up a dedicated server to dynamically retrieve and present content via APIs, which is more complex and requires a running server.
My Experience
If your site is lightweight and rarely updated static pages, using a Git Based CMS or not using a CMS at all is a good choice. But if your site spans multiple platforms or has dynamic needs, consider an API Driven CMS.
- Front Matter CMS - A good choice if you just want a simple and quick CMS interface inside VSCode; fully supports Astro.
- Decap CMS - The most mature open-source free Git Based CMS solution; it has all the expected features. Formerly Netlify CMS.
- Strapi - The most mature open-source self-hostable API Driven CMS solution; also offers hosted services.
I recommend choosing an open-source, self-hostable CMS because vendor lock-in is often an issue. Self-hosting typically requires more time, so evaluate based on your current needs.
Summary
This chapter covered the differences between CMS and Headless CMS. Such content management tools are not mandatory; you can still edit site content by writing Markdown or source code. Adding a CMS is crucial for non-developers to manage a site, and can also improve
References
- Use a CMS with Astro - Astro
- Day25 - 串接 CMS - The same article published concurrently in the iThome Ironman Challenge