https://mercury.postlight.com/parser?url=https://trackchanges.postlight.com/building-awesome-cms-f034344d8ed

aggregatorNotes.json

{
  "title": "Building Awesome CMS",
  "content": "<div><div><div class=\"section-content\"><div class=\"section-inner sectionLayout--insetColumn\"><figure id=\"1b95\" class=\"graf graf--figure graf-after--h3\"><img class=\"progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia-inner\" src=\"https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*zo51eqdjJ_XSU0D8Vm8P9A.png\"></figure><p id=\"c21b\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--figure\"><a href=\"https://github.com/postlight/awesome-cms\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">Awesome CMS</a> is&#x2026;an awesome list of awesome CMSes. It&#x2019;s on GitHub, so anyone can add to it via a pull request. Here are some notes on how and why it came to be.</p><p id=\"2a96\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--h3\">GitHub has a <a href=\"https://help.github.com/articles/search-syntax/\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">set of powerful commands</a> for narrowing search results. In seeking out modern content management tools, I used queries like this:</p><p id=\"5c79\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\"><a href=\"https://github.com/search?o=desc&amp;q=cms+OR+%22content+management%22+OR+admin+pushed%3A%3E2016-01-01+stars%3A%3E50&amp;ref=searchresults&amp;s=stars&amp;type=Repositories&amp;utf8=&#x2713;\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">cms OR &#x201C;content management&#x201D; OR admin pushed:&gt;2016&#x2013;01&#x2013;01 stars:&gt;50</a></p><p id=\"7d38\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">Sorting by stars, I worked my way backwards. I was able to quickly spot relevant CMS projects. I also started to notice some trends.</p><ul class=\"postList\"><li id=\"8671\" class=\"graf graf--li graf-after--p\">Modern and popular content management systems are written in PHP, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby. There are also a few content management systems written in&#xA0;.NET (C#), but they are much less popular on GitHub.</li><li id=\"a406\" class=\"graf graf--li graf-after--li\">Headless content management systems are gaining popularity. Simply presenting the UI for users to edit content, and relying on the end user to create the user-facing site by ingesting the API. <a href=\"http://getdirectus.com/\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--li-anchor\">Directus</a> and <a href=\"https://www.cloudcms.com/\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--li-anchor\">Cloud CMS</a> are headless CMS options.</li><li id=\"e133\" class=\"graf graf--li graf-after--li\">Static content management systems don&#x2019;t host pages for you. Instead they help generate your CMS, using static files. <a href=\"https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--li-anchor\">Netlify CMS</a>, <a href=\"https://respondcms.com/\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--li-anchor\">Respond CMS</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.getlektor.com/\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--li-anchor\">Lektor</a> are a few of the options in the static CMS space.</li></ul><p id=\"3bfc\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--h3\">I knew the list of all popular content management systems would be huge. I didn&#x2019;t want to put that data into Markdown directly, as it would be difficult to maintain and to augment with extra data (stars on GitHub, last push date, tags, etc).</p><p id=\"4bcb\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">Instead, I opted to store the data in <a href=\"https://github.com/toml-lang/toml\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">TOML</a>, a human-friendly configuration file language. You can view all of the data that powers Awesome CMS in the <a href=\"https://github.com/postlight/awesome-cms/tree/97216ef432963d4dfb2238340e2ebf9a4127fb1e/data\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">data folder</a>. Here&#x2019;s WordPress&#x2019; entry in that file:</p><pre id=\"4771\" class=\"graf graf--pre graf-after--p\">[[cms]]<br>name = &quot;WordPress&quot;<br>description = &quot;WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.&quot;<br>url = &quot;https://wordpress.org&quot;<br>github_repo = &quot;WordPress/WordPress&quot;<br>awesome_repo = &quot;miziomon/awesome-wordpress&quot;<br>language = &quot;php&quot;</pre><p id=\"4703\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--pre\">I process this file using JavaScript in <a href=\"https://github.com/postlight/awesome-cms/blob/97216ef432963d4dfb2238340e2ebf9a4127fb1e/scripts/generateReadme.js\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">generateReadme.js</a>. It handles processing the TOML, fetching information from GitHub, and generating the final README.md file using the <a href=\"https://github.com/postlight/awesome-cms/blob/master/README.md.hbs\" class=\"markup--anchor markup--p-anchor\">Handlebars template</a>. I&#x2019;m scraping GitHub for star counts because GitHub&#x2019;s API only allows for 60 requests an hour for authenticated users. We want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to contribute. Requiring users to generate a GitHub authentication token to generate the README wasn&#x2019;t an option.</p><p id=\"73aa\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">By storing the data in TOML at generating the README.md using JavaScript, I&#x2019;ve essentially created an incredibly light-weight, GitHub backed, static CMS to power Awesome CMS.</p><figure id=\"7c3e\" class=\"graf graf--figure graf-after--p graf--trailing\"><img class=\"progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia-inner\" src=\"https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Y69yr0JgwOaLzACB0ZXDGw.gif\"><figcaption class=\"imageCaption\">I heard you like content management systems</figcaption></figure></div></div></div></div>",
  "author": "Jeremy Mack",
  "date_published": "2016-10-03T12:48:58.385Z",
  "lead_image_url": "https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*zo51eqdjJ_XSU0D8Vm8P9A.png",
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  "url": "https://trackchanges.postlight.com/building-awesome-cms-f034344d8ed",
  "domain": "trackchanges.postlight.com",
  "excerpt": "Awesome CMS is…an awesome list of awesome CMSes. It’s on GitHub, so anyone can add to it via a pull request.",
  "word_count": 397,
  "direction": "ltr",
  "total_pages": 1,
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}