Vapid: an intentionally simple CMS(vapid.com) |
Vapid: an intentionally simple CMS(vapid.com) |
But a more serious question is, how is this different from the hundreds of other CMS? I am not attacking, but just trying to understand what motivated this and why someone might choose this. As someone who would need a CMS in the near future I am interested in this genuinely.
Don't say RTFM because I did, but I didn't find anything like "why use vapid?". Is this point in the gist supposed to be the clincher?
> You only need to know HTML (plus CSS and JS to the extent that your design calls for it).
However, if all you're doing is building a 5 page website, it's much simpler to just put in the configurable parts in the HTML as you're building it and let Vapid handle the dashboard, which the client can easily use to make small changes as needed.
Why not cut to the chase and show the client how to use FTP and a text editor? Why add more complexity beyond that?
Highly recommend watching: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
The basic idea has been executed already using PHP by Perch CMS[0], but this looks like it could be a good alternative (esp. if it's open source!)
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr-stewar...
{{intro type=html required=false}}
It looks to have a couple of errors, though: the intro field in it doesn’t look right: the default editor type is wysiwyg, so I presume there should be a toolbar there in practice; and it has required=false, so I presume the red star should be missing.
>The HTML is the CMS Add simple template tags to a static webpage, and Vapid will automatically generate the dashboard for you. No config files, no other languages required
While puzzling over the links (curved purple lines with end-points no arrows) over the image above. Then I guessed, HTML tabs can be added, and webform will update to reflect to the new tabs added. Right?
This took a good couple of minutes of thinking what this does. I suggest adding a video or two on the landing page with a demo. A before/after. Perhaps I'm stupid on not getting this, but I guess a lot of people are far more stupid than me.
Will give it a try next week!
Using page templates might allow www.surrealcms.com to manage a blog. Builtin blogging is planned for version 7.1.
Hugo + Netlify is the direction I am going now but that still seems overkill.
I really like the website too. Minus the small bugs people have already mentioned, the actual design and information on the front page is perfect. A lot of projects shared on HN could learn from this page, tbh (I mean that in an encouraging way, not an attack, but so many project homepages don't explain the project very well).
So is this actually an open-source project, or is the open source just intended as a preview, and it's expected that production workloads would always be in the SaaS version?
It looks great but I'm a bit confused by the intention.
Edit: It says on the medium post: "This is a great way to get familiar with the app, and prep your site(s) for deploying on the Vapid hosted service." So yeah looks like it's going to be a SaSS.
"Vapid can be deployed to any hosting service that supports Node.js."
This seems similar-ish, but with a self-hosted option - which I prefer after my experience when 900dpi shuttered ;)
Seems useful!
Have been working on something similar for a specific niche of CMSs, do you handle primitive lists/lists of complex types? (E.g. to create nav bars that can be modified by the CMS)
I might play with it this morning, with Choo!
I like systems that keep your work focused & simple.
Honestly, I'm excited for Vapid. I've always loved implementing CMS systems. WordPress is great, with undoubtably the largest community of plugins and templates, and like the new Gutenberg editor... but I'm also starting to fall in love with the JAMstack model (i.e. Netlify, Headless CMS). Simply pushing commits to Github and sitting back. Netlify Forms is nice and easy, but their CMS sucks IMHO. Which is why I'm excited for something like Vapid. It fills that void I'm feeling.
I can picture myself spinning out all these nice custom CMS websites for clients and maybe building some custom browser plugins to make it so easy for clients (like how Tipe.io does). That feels like the future / next level.
The main use case I think is for people who build landing pages for other people.
A static site generator is good if you're building a landing page for yourself, but if you're building a website for the butcher shop down the road, they're not gonna want to edit individual markdown files. So you throw in some Perch (or Vapid) variables and it does the rest for you. Then you can just give the shop owner a login and they can edit the site as they see fit.
The appeal is to have the ease of a static site generator (you don't have to develop your HTML with any sort of "CMS" in mind) while actually having that CMS functionality.
I'm excited about multiple products in this space, because it means I can probably switch between them in a matter of minutes/hours, realistically.
- You create a bunch of static HTML pages with a bunch of tags like: {{field_name type=7_to_choose_from ...opts}}
- Vapid runs a node server that scans all your HTML files and parses out the tags in each html file
- The node server runs a CMS webapp (the "dashboard") that generates field inputs for the parsed tags (text inputs, image selectors, wysiwyg editors, etc... whatever matches your tag type)
- Data you input is persisted in a SQLite DB
- The node server serves up your static HTML pages as if they were any standard template (mustache, etc)
- It runs a watch server, so any changes to your files are auto updated
Onboarding demo seems to run as a 'development' server. Quick perusal of the docs don't describe what the production mode is (probably no watch server?).
That's all as far as I can tell. Seems fine for lightweight pages, as promised.
If that's true, it seems like the kinda missing bridge/glue between generators like Jekyll/Hugo; allowing static content without needing to be a web dev.
But seriously, in my experience, I'd rather use something other than Wordpress. There are lots of things it does well, but not usually for the projects I work on. Use the tool that works well for the project.
My go to example is a simple payment order form (or sometimes forms in general depending on the CMS/static site generator).
If I use this tool, there are no forms. Client comes back a year from now and says they want to add a form. So after much fuss we move to something with forms. Then another year later, they want to take payments for $20 T shirts. We could spin up a 3rd party service but sometimes that makes things even more complicated.
If I started on WP, I can use one of the dozen form builders that support basic payments and I would have saved my client thousands of dollars of transfer fees and hours of my own time converting data between these platforms for little gain.
I say all this as someone who builds mostly WordPress sites at this time, though I’m always trying out new things too.