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Netlify CMS

Overview

Netlify CMS is an open source content management system for your Git workflow that enables you to provide editors with a friendly UI and intuitive workflows. You can use it with any static site generator to create faster, more flexible web projects. Content is stored in your Git repository alongside your code for easier versioning, multi-channel publishing, and the option to handle content updates directly in Git.

At its core, Netlify CMS is an open-source React app that acts as a wrapper for the Git workflow, using the GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket API. This provides many advantages, including:

  • Fast, web-based UI: With rich-text editing, real-time preview, and drag-and-drop media uploads.

  • Platform agnostic: Works with most static site generators.

  • Easy installation: Add two files to your site and hook up the backend by including those files in your build process or linking to our Content Delivery Network (CDN).

  • Modern authentication: Using GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket and JSON web tokens.

  • Flexible content types: Specify an unlimited number of content types with custom fields.

  • Fully extensible: Create custom-styled previews, UI widgets, and editor plugins.

Netlify CMS vs. Netlify

Netlify.com is a platform you can use to automatically build, deploy, serve, and manage your frontend sites and web apps. It also provides a variety of other features like form processing, serverless functions, and split testing. Not all Netlify sites use Netlify CMS, and not all sites using Netlify CMS are on Netlify.

The folks at Netlify created Netlify CMS to fill a gap in the static site generation pipeline. There were some great proprietary headless CMS options, but no real contenders that were open source and extensible—that could turn into a community-built ecosystem like WordPress or Drupal. For that reason, Netlify CMS is made to be community-driven, and has never been locked to the Netlify platform (despite the name).

With this in mind, you can:

  • Use Netlify CMS without Netlify and deploy your site where you always have, hooking up your own CI, site hosting, CDN, etc.

  • Use Netlify without Netlify CMS and edit your static site in your code editor.

  • Or, use them together and have a fully-working CMS-enabled site with one click!

If you hook up Netlify CMS to your website, you're basically adding a tool for content editors to make commits to your site repository without touching code or learning Git.

Find out more

Beta Features!

We run new functionality in an open beta format from time to time. That means that this functionality is totally available for use, and we think it might be ready for primetime, but it could break or change without notice.

Use these features at your own risk.

Working with a Local Git Repository

**added in **netlify-cms@2.10.17** / **netlify-cms-app@2.11.14

You can connect Netlify CMS to a local Git repository, instead of working with a live repo.

  1. Navigate to a local Git repository configured with the CMS.

  2. Add the top-level property local_backend configuration to your config.yml:

backend:
  name: git-gateway

# when using the default proxy server port
local_backend: true

  1. Run npx netlify-cms-proxy-server from the root directory of the above repository.

    • If the default port (8081) is in use, the proxy server won't start and you will see an error message. In this case, follow these steps before proceeding.

  2. Start your local development server (e.g. run gatsby develop).

  3. Open http://localhost:8000/admin to verify that your can administer your content locally.

Note: netlify-cms-proxy-server runs an unauthenticated express server. As any client can send requests to the server, it should only be used for local development.

Configure the Netlify CMS proxy server port number

  1. Create a .env file in the project's root folder and define the PORT you'd like the proxy server to use

PORT=8082

  1. Update the local_backend object in config.yml and specify a url property to use your custom port number

backend:
  name: git-gateway

local_backend:
  # when using a custom proxy server port
  url: http://localhost:8082/api/v1
  # when accessing the local site from a host other than 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1'
  allowed_hosts: ['192.168.0.1']

GitLab and BitBucket Editorial Workflow Support

**added in **netlify-cms@2.10.6** / **netlify-cms-app@2.11.3

You can enable the Editorial Workflow with the following line in your Netlify CMS config.yml file:

publish_mode: editorial_workflow

In order to track unpublished entries statuses the GitLab implementation uses merge requests labels and the BitBucket implementation uses pull requests comments.

i18n Support

The CMS can provide a side by side interface for authoring content in multiple languages. Configuring the CMS for i18n support requires top level configuration, collection level configuration and field level configuration.

Top level configuration

i18n:
  # Required and can be one of multiple_folders, multiple_files or single_file
  # multiple_folders - persists files in `<folder>/<locale>/<slug>.<extension>`
  # multiple_files - persists files in `<folder>/<slug>.<locale>.<extension>`
  # single_file - persists a single file in `<folder>/<slug>.<extension>`
  structure: multiple_folders

  # Required - a list of locales to show in the editor UI
  locales: [en, de, fr]

  # Optional, defaults to the first item in locales.
  # The locale to be used for fields validation and as a baseline for the entry.
  default_locale: en

Collection level configuration

collections:
  - name: i18n_content
    # same as the top level, but all fields are optional and defaults to the top level
    # can also be a boolean to accept the top level defaults
    i18n: true

When using a file collection, you must also enable i18n for each individual file:

collections:
  - name: pages
    label: Pages
    # Configure i18n for this collection.
    i18n:
      structure: single_file
      locales: [en, de, fr]
    files:
      - name: about
        label: About Page
        file: site/content/about.yml
        # Enable i18n for this file.
        i18n: true
        fields:
          - { label: Title, name: title, widget: string, i18n: true }

Field level configuration

fields:
  - label: Title
    name: title
    widget: string
    # same as 'i18n: translate'. Allows translation of the title field
    i18n: true
  - label: Date
    name: date
    widget: datetime
    # The date field will be duplicated from the default locale.
    i18n: duplicate
  - label: Body
    name: body
    # The markdown field will be omitted from the translation.
    widget: markdown

Example configuration:

i18n:
  structure: multiple_folders
  locales: [en, de, fr]

collections:
  - name: posts
    label: Posts
    folder: content/posts
    create: true
    i18n: true
    fields:
      - label: Title
        name: title
        widget: string
        i18n: true
      - label: Date
        name: date
        widget: datetime
        i18n: duplicate
      - label: Body
        name: body
        widget: markdown

Limitations

  1. File collections support only structure: single_file.

  2. List widgets only support i18n: true. i18n configuration on sub fields is ignored.

  3. Object widgets only support i18n: true and i18n configuration should be done per field:

- label: 'Object'
  name: 'object'
  widget: 'object'
  i18n: true
  fields:
    - { label: 'String', name: 'string', widget: 'string', i18n: true }
    - { label: 'Date', name: 'date', widget: 'datetime', i18n: duplicate }
    - { label: 'Boolean', name: 'boolean', widget: 'boolean', i18n: duplicate }
    - {
        label: 'Object',
        name: 'object',
        widget: 'object',
        i18n: true,
        field: { label: 'String', name: 'string', widget: 'string', i18n: duplicate },
      }

GitHub GraphQL API

Experimental support for GitHub's GraphQL API is now available for the GitHub backend.

Note: not currently compatible with Git Gateway.

For many queries, GraphQL allows data to be retrieved using less individual API requests compared to a REST API. GitHub's GraphQL API still does not support all mutations necessary to completely replace their REST API, so this feature only calls the new GraphQL API where possible.

You can use the GraphQL API for the GitHub backend by setting backend.use_graphql to true in your CMS config:

backend:
  name: github
  repo: owner/repo # replace this with your repo info
  use_graphql: true

Learn more about the benefits of GraphQL in the GraphQL docs.

Open Authoring

When using the GitHub backend, you can use Netlify CMS to accept contributions from GitHub users without giving them access to your repository. When they make changes in the CMS, the CMS forks your repository for them behind the scenes, and all the changes are made to the fork. When the contributor is ready to submit their changes, they can set their draft as ready for review in the CMS. This triggers a pull request to your repository, which you can merge using the GitHub UI.

At the same time, any contributors who do have write access to the repository can continue to use Netlify CMS normally.

More details and setup instructions can be found on the Open Authoring docs page.

Folder Collections Path

By default the CMS stores folder collection content under the folder specified in the collection setting.

For example configuring folder: posts for a collection will save the content under posts/post-title.md.

You can now specify an additional path template (similar to the slug template) to control the content destination.

This allows saving content in subfolders, e.g. configuring path: '{{year}}/{{slug}}' will save the content under posts/2019/post-title.md.

Folder Collections Media and Public Folder

By default the CMS stores media files for all collections under a global media_folder directory as specified in the configuration.

When using the global media_folder directory any entry field that points to a media file will use the absolute path to the published file as designated by the public_folder configuration.

For example configuring:

media_folder: static/media
public_folder: /media

And saving an entry with an image named image.png will result in the image being saved under static/media/image.png and relevant entry fields populated with the value of /media/image.png.

Some static site generators (e.g. Gatsby) work best when using relative image paths.

This can now be achieved using a per collection media_folder configuration which specifies a relative media folder for the collection.

For example, the following configuration will result in media files being saved in the same directory as the entry, and the image field being populated with the relative path to the image.

media_folder: static/media
public_folder: /media
collections:
  - name: posts
    label: Posts
    label_singular: 'Post'
    folder: content/posts
    path: '{{slug}}/index'
    media_folder: ''
    public_folder: ''
    fields:
      - label: Title
        name: title
        widget: string
      - label: 'Cover Image'
        name: 'image'
        widget: 'image'

More specifically, saving an entry with a title of example post with an image named image.png will result in a directory structure of:

content
  posts
    example-post
      index.md
      image.png

And for the image field being populated with a value of image.png.

Note: When specifying a path on a folder collection, media_folder defaults to an empty string.

Available template tags:

Supports all of the slug templates and:

  • {{dirname}} The path to the file's parent directory, relative to the collection's folder.

  • {{filename}} The file name without the extension part.

  • {{extension}} The file extension.

  • {{media_folder}} The global media_folder.

  • {{public_folder}} The global public_folder.

List Widget: Variable Types

Before this feature, the list widget allowed a set of fields to be repeated, but every list item had the same set of fields available. With variable types, multiple named sets of fields can be defined, which opens the door to highly flexible content authoring (even page building) in Netlify CMS.

Note: this feature does not yet support default previews and requires registering a preview template in order to show up in the preview pane.

To use variable types in the list widget, update your field configuration as follows:

  1. Instead of defining your list fields under fields or field, define them under types. Similar to fields, types must be an array of field definition objects.

  2. Each field definition under types must use the object widget (this is the default value for widget).

Additional list widget options

  • types: a nested list of object widgets. All widgets must be of type object. Every object widget may define different set of fields.

  • typeKey: the name of the field that will be added to every item in list representing the name of the object widget that item belongs to. Ignored if types is not defined. Default is type.

  • summary: allows customization of a collapsed list item object in a similar way to a collection summary

Example Configuration

The example configuration below imagines a scenario where the editor can add two "types" of content, either a "carousel" or a "spotlight". Each type has a unique name and set of fields.

- label: 'Home Section'
  name: 'sections'
  widget: 'list'
  types:
    - label: 'Carousel'
      name: 'carousel'
      widget: object
      summary: '{{fields.header}}'
      fields:
        - { label: Header, name: header, widget: string, default: 'Image Gallery' }
        - { label: Template, name: template, widget: string, default: 'carousel.html' }
        - label: Images
          name: images
          widget: list
          field: { label: Image, name: image, widget: image }
    - label: 'Spotlight'
      name: 'spotlight'
      widget: object
      fields:
        - { label: Header, name: header, widget: string, default: 'Spotlight' }
        - { label: Template, name: template, widget: string, default: 'spotlight.html' }
        - { label: Text, name: text, widget: text, default: 'Hello World' }

Example Output

The output for the list widget will be an array of objects, and each object will have a type key with the name of the type used for the list item. The type key name can be customized via the typeKey property in the list configuration.

If the above example configuration were used to create a carousel, a spotlight, and another carousel, the output could look like this:

title: Home
sections:
  - type: carousel
    header: Image Gallery
    template: carousel.html
    images:
      - images/image01.png
      - images/image02.png
      - images/image03.png
  - type: spotlight
    header: Spotlight
    template: spotlight.html
    text: Hello World
  - type: carousel
    header: Image Gallery
    template: carousel.html
    images:
      - images/image04.png
      - images/image05.png
      - images/image06.png

Custom Mount Element

Netlify CMS always creates its own DOM element for mounting the application, which means it always takes over the entire page, and is generally inflexible if you're trying to do something creative, like injecting it into a shared context.

You can now provide your own element for Netlify CMS to mount in by setting the target element's ID as nc-root. If Netlify CMS finds an element with this ID during initialization, it will mount within that element instead of creating its own.

Manual Initialization

Netlify CMS can now be manually initialized, rather than automatically loading up the moment you import it. The whole point of this at the moment is to inject configuration into Netlify CMS before it loads, bypassing need for an actual Netlify CMS config.yml. This is important, for example, when creating tight integrations with static site generators.

Assuming you have the netlify-cms package installed to your project, manual initialization works by setting window.CMS_MANUAL_INIT = true before importing the CMS:

// This global flag enables manual initialization.
window.CMS_MANUAL_INIT = true
// Usage with import from npm package
import CMS, { init } from 'netlify-cms'
// Usage with script tag
const { CMS, initCMS: init } = window
/**
 * Initialize without passing in config - equivalent to just importing
 * Netlify CMS the old way.
 */
init()
/**
 * Optionally pass in a config object. This object will be merged into
 * `config.yml` if it exists, and any portion that conflicts with
 * `config.yml` will be overwritten. Arrays will be replaced during merge,
 * not concatenated.
 *
 * For example, the code below contains an incomplete config, but using it,
 * your `config.yml` can be missing its backend property, allowing you
 * to set this property at runtime.
 */
init({
  config: {
    backend: {
      name: 'git-gateway',
    },
  },
})
/**
 * Optionally pass in a complete config object and set a flag
 *  (`load_config_file: false`) to ignore the `config.yml`.
 *
 * For example, the code below contains a complete config. The
 * `config.yml` will be ignored when setting `load_config_file` to false.
 * It is not required if the `config.yml` file is missing to set
 * `load_config_file`, but will improve performance and avoid a load error.
 */
init({
  config: {
    backend: {
      name: 'git-gateway',
    },
    load_config_file: false,
    media_folder: "static/images/uploads",
    public_folder: "/images/uploads",
    collections: [
      { label: "Blog", name: "blog", folder: "_posts/blog", create: true, fields: [
        { label: "Title", name: "title", widget: "string" },
        { label: "Publish Date", name: "date", widget: "datetime" },
        { label: "Featured Image", name: "thumbnail", widget: "image" },
        { label: "Body", name: "body", widget: "markdown" },
      ]},
    ],
  },
})
// The registry works as expected, and can be used before or after init.
CMS.registerPreviewTemplate(...);

Raw CSS in registerPreviewStyle

registerPreviewStyle can now accept a CSS string, in addition to accepting a url. The feature is activated by passing in an object as the second argument, with raw set to a truthy value. This is critical for integrating with modern build tooling. Here's an example using webpack:

/**
 * Assumes a webpack project with `sass-loader` and `css-loader` installed.
 * Takes advantage of the `toString` method in the return value of `css-loader`.
 */
import CMS from 'netlify-cms';
import styles from '!css-loader!sass-loader!../main.scss';
CMS.registerPreviewStyle(styles.toString(), { raw: true });

Squash merge GitHub pull requests

When using the Editorial Workflow with the github or GitHub-connected git-gateway backends, Netlify CMS creates a pull request for each unpublished entry. Every time the unpublished entry is changed and saved, a new commit is added to the pull request. When the entry is published, the pull request is merged, and all of those commits are added to your project commit history in a merge commit.

The squash merge option causes all commits to be "squashed" into a single commit when the pull request is merged, and the resulting commit is rebased onto the target branch, avoiding the merge commit altogether.

To enable this feature, you can set the following option in your Netlify CMS config.yml:

backend:
  squash_merges: true

Commit Message Templates

You can customize the templates used by Netlify CMS to generate commit messages by setting the commit_messages option under backend in your Netlify CMS config.yml.

Template tags wrapped in curly braces will be expanded to include information about the file changed by the commit. For example, {{path}} will include the full path to the file changed.

Setting up your Netlify CMS config.yml to recreate the default values would look like this:

backend:
  commit_messages:
    create: Create {{collection}} “{{slug}}”
    update: Update {{collection}} “{{slug}}”
    delete: Delete {{collection}} “{{slug}}”
    uploadMedia: Upload “{{path}}”
    deleteMedia: Delete “{{path}}”
    openAuthoring: '{{message}}'

Netlify CMS generates the following commit types:

Template tags produce the following output:

  • {{slug}}: the url-safe filename of the entry changed

  • {{collection}}: the name of the collection containing the entry changed

  • {{path}}: the full path to the file changed

  • {{message}}: the relevant message based on the current change (e.g. the create message when an entry is created)

  • {{author-login}}: the login/username of the author

  • {{author-name}}: the full name of the author (might be empty based on the user's profile)

Image widget file size limit

You can set a limit to as what the maximum file size of a file is that users can upload directly into a image field.

Example config:

- label: 'Featured Image'
  name: 'thumbnail'
  widget: 'image'
  default: '/uploads/chocolate-dogecoin.jpg'
  media_library:
    config:
      max_file_size: 512000 # in bytes, only for default media library

Summary string template transformations

You can apply transformations on fields in a summary string template using filter notation syntax.

Example config:

collections:
  - name: 'posts'
    label: 'Posts'
    folder: '_posts'
    summary: "{{title | upper}} - {{date | date('YYYY-MM-DD')}}"
    fields:
      - { label: 'Title', name: 'title', widget: 'string' }
      - { label: 'Publish Date', name: 'date', widget: 'datetime' }

The above config will transform the title field to uppercase and format the date field using YYYY-MM-DD format. Available transformations are upper, lower and date('<format>')

Registering to CMS Events

You can execute a function when a specific CMS event occurs.

Example usage:

CMS.registerEventListener({
  name: 'prePublish',
  handler: ({ author, entry }) => console.log(JSON.stringify({ author, data: entry.get('data') })),
});

Supported events are prePublish, postPublish, preUnpublish, postUnpublish, preSave and postSave. The preSave hook can be used to modify the entry data like so:

CMS.registerEventListener({
  name: 'preSave',
  handler: ({ entry }) => {
    return entry.get('data').set('title', 'new title');
  },
});

Dynamic Default Values

When linking to /admin/#/collections/posts/new you can pass URL parameters to pre-populate an entry.

For example given the configuration:

collections:
  - name: posts
    label: Posts
    folder: content/posts
    create: true
    fields:
      - label: Title
        name: title
        widget: string
      - label: Object
        name: object
        widget: object
        fields:
          - label: Title
            name: title
            widget: string
      - label: body
        name: body
        widget: markdown

clicking the following link: /#/collections/posts/new?title=first&object.title=second&body=%23%20content

will open the editor for a new post with the title field populated with first, the nested object.title field with second and the markdown body field with # content.

Note: URL Encoding might be required for certain values (e.g. in the previous example the value for body is URL encoded).

Nested Collections

Allows a folder collection to show a nested structure of entries and edit the locations of the entries.

Example configuration:

collections:
  - name: pages
    label: Pages
    label_singular: 'Page'
    folder: content/pages
    create: true
    # adding a nested object will show the collection folder structure
    nested:
      depth: 100 # max depth to show in the collection tree
      summary: '{{title}}' # optional summary for a tree node, defaults to the inferred title field
    fields:
      - label: Title
        name: title
        widget: string
      - label: Body
        name: body
        widget: markdown
    # adding a meta object with a path property allows editing the path of entries
    # moving an existing entry will move the entire sub tree of the entry to the new location
    meta: { path: { widget: string, label: 'Path', index_file: 'index' } }

Nested collections expect the following directory structure:

content
└── pages
    ├── authors
    │   ├── author-1
    │   │   └── index.md
    │   └── index.md
    ├── index.md
    └── posts
        ├── hello-world
        │   └── index.md
        └── index.md

Remark plugins

You can register plugins to customize remark, the library used by the richtext editor for serializing and deserializing markdown.

// register a plugin
CMS.registerRemarkPlugin(plugin);

// provide global settings to all plugins, e.g. for customizing `remark-stringify`
CMS.registerRemarkPlugin({ settings: { bullet: '-' } });

Note that netlify-widget-markdown currently uses remark@10, so you should check a plugin's compatibility first.

Add to Your Site

You can adapt Netlify CMS to a wide variety of projects. It works with any content written in markdown, JSON, YAML, or TOML files, stored in a repo on GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. You can also create your own custom backend.

This tutorial guides you through the steps for adding Netlify CMS to a site that's built with a common static site generator, like Jekyll, Hugo, Hexo, or Gatsby. Alternatively, you can start from a template or dive right into configuration options.

App File Structure

A static admin folder contains all Netlify CMS files, stored at the root of your published site. Where you store this folder in the source files depends on your static site generator. Here's the static file location for a few of the most popular static site generators:

If your generator isn't listed here, you can check its documentation, or as a shortcut, look in your project for a css or images folder. The contents of folders like that are usually processed as static files, so it's likely you can store your admin folder next to those. (When you've found the location, feel free to add it to these docs by filing a pull request!)

Inside the admin folder, you'll create two files:

admin
 ├ index.html
 └ config.yml

The first file, admin/index.html, is the entry point for the Netlify CMS admin interface. This means that users navigate to yoursite.com/admin/ to access it. On the code side, it's a basic HTML starter page that loads the Netlify CMS JavaScript file. The second file, admin/config.yml, is the heart of your Netlify CMS installation, and a bit more complex. The Configuration section covers the details.

In this example, we pull the admin/index.html file from a public CDN.

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
  <title>Content Manager</title>
</head>
<body>
  <!-- Include the script that builds the page and powers Netlify CMS -->
  <script src="https://unpkg.com/netlify-cms@^2.0.0/dist/netlify-cms.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

In the code above the script is loaded from the unpkg CDN. Should there be any issue, jsDelivr can be used as an alternative source. Simply set the src to https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/netlify-cms@^2.0.0/dist/netlify-cms.js

Installing with npm

You can also use Netlify CMS as an npm module. Wherever you import Netlify CMS, it automatically runs, taking over the current page. Make sure the script that imports it only runs on your CMS page. First install the package and save it to your project:

npm install netlify-cms-app --save

Then import it (assuming your project has tooling for imports):

import CMS from 'netlify-cms-app'
// Initialize the CMS object
CMS.init()
// Now the registry is available via the CMS object.
CMS.registerPreviewTemplate('my-template', MyTemplate)

Configuration

Configuration is different for every site, so we'll break it down into parts. Add all the code snippets in this section to your admin/config.yml file.

Backend

We're using Netlify for our hosting and authentication in this tutorial, so backend configuration is fairly straightforward.

For GitHub and GitLab repositories, you can start your Netlify CMS config.yml file with these lines:

backend:
  name: git-gateway
  branch: master # Branch to update (optional; defaults to master)

(For Bitbucket repositories, use the Bitbucket backend instructions instead.)

The configuration above specifies your backend protocol and your publication branch. Git Gateway is an open source API that acts as a proxy between authenticated users of your site and your site repo. (We'll get to the details of that in the Authentication section below.) If you leave out the branch declaration, it defaults to master.

Editorial Workflow

Note: Editorial workflow works with GitHub repositories, and support for GitLab and Bitbucket is in beta.

By default, saving a post in the CMS interface pushes a commit directly to the publication branch specified in backend. However, you also have the option to enable the Editorial Workflow, which adds an interface for drafting, reviewing, and approving posts. To do this, add the following line to your Netlify CMS config.yml:

# This line should *not* be indented
publish_mode: editorial_workflow

Media and Public Folders

Netlify CMS allows users to upload images directly within the editor. For this to work, the CMS needs to know where to save them. If you already have an images folder in your project, you could use its path, possibly creating an uploads sub-folder, for example:

# This line should *not* be indented
media_folder: "images/uploads" # Media files will be stored in the repo under images/uploads

If you're creating a new folder for uploaded media, you'll need to know where your static site generator expects static files. You can refer to the paths outlined above in App File Structure, and put your media folder in the same location where you put the admin folder.

Note that themedia_folder file path is relative to the project root, so the example above would work for Jekyll, GitBook, or any other generator that stores static files at the project root. However, it would not work for Hugo, Hexo, Middleman or others that store static files in a subfolder. Here's an example that could work for a Hugo site:

# These lines should *not* be indented
media_folder: "static/images/uploads" # Media files will be stored in the repo under static/images/uploads
public_folder: "/images/uploads" # The src attribute for uploaded media will begin with /images/uploads

The configuration above adds a new setting, public_folder. While media_folder specifies where uploaded files are saved in the repo, public_folder indicates where they are found in the published site. Image src attributes use this path, which is relative to the file where it's called. For this reason, we usually start the path at the site root, using the opening /.

If public_folder is not set, Netlify CMS defaults to the same value as media_folder, adding an opening / if one is not included.

Collections

Collections define the structure for the different content types on your static site. Since every site is different, the collections settings differ greatly from one site to the next.

Let's say your site has a blog, with the posts stored in _posts/blog, and files saved in a date-title format, like 1999-12-31-lets-party.md. Each post begins with settings in yaml-formatted front matter, like so:

---
layout: blog
title: "Let's Party"
date: 1999-12-31 11:59:59 -0800
thumbnail: "/images/prince.jpg"
rating: 5
---

This is the post body, where I write about our last chance to party before the Y2K bug destroys us all.

Given this example, our collections settings would look like this in your NetlifyCMS config.yml file:

collections:
  - name: "blog" # Used in routes, e.g., /admin/collections/blog
    label: "Blog" # Used in the UI
    folder: "_posts/blog" # The path to the folder where the documents are stored
    create: true # Allow users to create new documents in this collection
    slug: "{{year}}-{{month}}-{{day}}-{{slug}}" # Filename template, e.g., YYYY-MM-DD-title.md
    fields: # The fields for each document, usually in front matter
      - {label: "Layout", name: "layout", widget: "hidden", default: "blog"}
      - {label: "Title", name: "title", widget: "string"}
      - {label: "Publish Date", name: "date", widget: "datetime"}
      - {label: "Featured Image", name: "thumbnail", widget: "image"}
      - {label: "Rating (scale of 1-5)", name: "rating", widget: "number"}
      - {label: "Body", name: "body", widget: "markdown"}

Let's break that down:

As described above, the widget property specifies a built-in or custom UI widget for a given field. When a content editor enters a value into a widget, that value is saved in the document front matter as the value for the name specified for that field. A full listing of available widgets can be found in the Widgets doc.

Based on this example, you can go through the post types in your site and add the appropriate settings to your Netlify CMS config.yml file. Each post type should be listed as a separate node under the collections field. See the Collections reference doc for more configuration options.

Filter

The entries for any collection can be filtered based on the value of a single field. The example collection below only shows post entries with the value en in the language field.

collections:
  - name: "posts"
    label: "Post"
    folder: "_posts"
    filter:
      field: language
      value: en
    fields:
      - {label: "Language", name: "language"}

Authentication

Now that you have your Netlify CMS files in place and configured, all that's left is to enable authentication. We're using the Netlify platform here because it's one of the quickest ways to get started, but you can learn about other authentication options in the Backends doc.

Setup on Netlify

Netlify offers a built-in authentication service called Identity. In order to use it, connect your site repo with Netlify. Netlify has published a general Step-by-Step Guide for this, along with detailed guides for many popular static site generators, including Jekyll, Hugo, Hexo, Middleman, Gatsby, and more.

Enable Identity and Git Gateway

Netlify's Identity and Git Gateway services allow you to manage CMS admin users for your site without requiring them to have an account with your Git host or commit access on your repo. From your site dashboard on Netlify:

  1. Go to Settings > Identity, and select Enable Identity service.

  2. Under Registration preferences, select Open or Invite only. In most cases, you want only invited users to access your CMS, but if you're just experimenting, you can leave it open for convenience.

  3. If you'd like to allow one-click login with services like Google and GitHub, check the boxes next to the services you'd like to use, under External providers.

  4. Scroll down to Services > Git Gateway, and click Enable Git Gateway. This authenticates with your Git host and generates an API access token. In this case, we're leaving the Roles field blank, which means any logged in user may access the CMS. For information on changing this, check the Netlify Identity documentation.

Add the Netlify Identity Widget

With the backend set to handle authentication, now you need a frontend interface to connect to it. The open source Netlify Identity Widget is a drop-in widget made for just this purpose. To include the widget in your site, add the following script tag in two places:

<script src="https://identity.netlify.com/v1/netlify-identity-widget.js"></script>

Add this to the <head> of your CMS index page at /admin/index.html, as well as the <head> of your site's main index page. Depending on how your site generator is set up, this may mean you need to add it to the default template, or to a "partial" or "include" template. If you can find where the site stylesheet is linked, that's probably the right place. Alternatively, you can include the script in your site using Netlify's Script Injection feature.

When a user logs in with the Netlify Identity widget, an access token directs to the site homepage. In order to complete the login and get back to the CMS, redirect the user back to the /admin/ path. To do this, add the following script before the closing body tag of your site's main index page:

<script>
  if (window.netlifyIdentity) {
    window.netlifyIdentity.on("init", user => {
      if (!user) {
        window.netlifyIdentity.on("login", () => {
          document.location.href = "/admin/";
        });
      }
    });
  }
</script>

Note: This example script requires modern JavaScript and does not work on IE11. For legacy browser support, use function expressions (function () {}) in place of the arrow functions (() => {}), or use a transpiler such as Babel.

Accessing the CMS

Your site CMS is now fully configured and ready for login!

If you set your registration preference to "Invite only," invite yourself (and anyone else you choose) as a site user. To do this, select the Identity tab from your site dashboard, and then select the Invite users button. Invited users receive an email invitation with a confirmation link. Clicking the link will take you to your site with a login prompt.

If you left your site registration open, or for return visits after confirming an email invitation, access your site's CMS at yoursite.com/admin/.

Note: No matter where you access Netlify CMS — whether running locally, in a staging environment, or in your published site — it always fetches and commits files in your hosted repository (for example, on GitHub), on the branch you configured in your Netlify CMS config.yml file. This means that content fetched in the admin UI matches the content in the repository, which may be different from your locally running site. It also means that content saved using the admin UI saves directly to the hosted repository, even if you're running the UI locally or in staging.

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