Ardalis Blog (via Gatsby + Netlify CMS Starter)

Note: This starter uses Gatsby v2.

This repo contains an example business website that is built with Gatsby, and Netlify CMS: Demo Link.

It follows the JAMstack architecture by using Git as a single source of truth, and Netlify for continuous deployment, and CDN distribution.

Features

• A simple landing page with blog functionality built with Netlify CMS
• Editabe Pages: Landing, About, Product, Blog-Collection and Contact page with Netlify Form support
• Create Blog posts from Netlify CMS
• Tags: Separate page for posts under each tag
• Basic directory organization
• Uses Bulma for styling, but size is reduced by purge-css-plugin
• Blazing fast loading times thanks to pre-rendered HTML and automatic chunk loading of JS files
• Uses gatsby-image with Netlify-CMS preview support
• Separate components for everything
• Netlify deploy configuration
• Netlify function support, see lambda folder
• Perfect score on Lighthouse for SEO, Accessibility and Performance (wip:PWA)
• ..and more

Prerequisites

• Node v16.18.0
• Gatsby CLI
• Netlify CLI

Getting Started (Recommended)

Netlify CMS can run in any frontend web environment, but the quickest way to try it out is by running it on a pre-configured starter site with Netlify. The example here is the Kaldi coffee company template (adapted from One Click Hugo CMS). Use the button below to build and deploy your own copy of the repository:

After clicking that button, you’ll authenticate with GitHub and choose a repository name. Netlify will then automatically create a repository in your GitHub account with a copy of the files from the template. Next, it will build and deploy the new site on Netlify, bringing you to the site dashboard when the build is complete. Next, you’ll need to set up Netlify’s Identity service to authorize users to log in to the CMS.

Access Locally

Pulldown a local copy of the Github repository Netlify created for you, with the name you specified in the previous step

$ git clone https://github.com/[GITHUB_USERNAME]/[REPO_NAME].git
$ cd [REPO_NAME]
$ yarn
$ netlify dev # or ntl dev

This uses the new Netlify Dev CLI feature to serve any functions you have in the lambda folder.

To test the CMS locally, you'll need to run a production build of the site:

SAS: Using npm install instead of yarn below

$ npm install
$ npm run build
$ netlify dev # or ntl dev

Run locally with gatsby develop after CLI installed.

Troubleshooting

"Cannot find gatsby.js"

Try npm install --save gatsby-cli. See this SO answer.

Media Libraries (installed, but optional)

Media Libraries have been included in this starter as a default. If you are not planning to use Uploadcare or Cloudinary in your project, you can remove them from module import and registration in src/cms/cms.js. Here is an example of the lines to comment or remove them your project.

import CMS from 'netlify-cms-app'
// import uploadcare from 'netlify-cms-media-library-uploadcare'
// import cloudinary from 'netlify-cms-media-library-cloudinary'

import AboutPagePreview from './preview-templates/AboutPagePreview'
import BlogPostPreview from './preview-templates/BlogPostPreview'
import ProductPagePreview from './preview-templates/ProductPagePreview'
import IndexPagePreview from './preview-templates/IndexPagePreview'

// CMS.registerMediaLibrary(uploadcare);
// CMS.registerMediaLibrary(cloudinary);

CMS.registerPreviewTemplate('index', IndexPagePreview)
CMS.registerPreviewTemplate('about', AboutPagePreview)
CMS.registerPreviewTemplate('products', ProductPagePreview)
CMS.registerPreviewTemplate('blog', BlogPostPreview)

Note: Don't forget to also remove them from package.json and yarn.lock / package-lock.json using yarn or npm. During the build netlify-cms-app will bundle the media libraries as well, having them removed will save you build time. Example:

yarn remove netlify-cms-media-library-uploadcare

OR

yarn remove netlify-cms-media-library-cloudinary

Getting Started (Without Netlify)

$ gatsby new [SITE_DIRECTORY_NAME] https://github.com/netlify-templates/gatsby-starter-netlify-cms/
$ cd [SITE_DIRECTORY_NAME]
$ npm run build
$ npm run serve

Purgecss

This plugin uses gatsby-plugin-purgecss and bulma. The bulma builds are usually ~170K but reduced 90% by purgecss.

Finding Empty Descriptions

This query can be used to help with fidning empty description fields on the site. This is important for both the OpenGraph preview as well as SEO.

    {
          site {
            siteMetadata {
              siteUrl
            }
          }
          allMarkdownRemark(filter: {frontmatter: {description: {eq:null}}}) {
            nodes {
              frontmatter {
                title
                description
              }
            }
          }  
        }