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ApostropheCMS 3 Alpha — Take ownership of your digital experience.
Manage content elegantly with developer forward tech. Leveraging the latest JavaScript best practices for an open source headless CMS, coupled with intuitive in-context live editing, drag and drop functionality, and a dynamic visual design palette.
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Max Prilutskiy
Launching soon!
Looks good! 👏
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Hello Product Hunters!
Today we are excited to share what we've been working on for the last year with the alpha release of ApostropheCMS 3. Apostrophe helps teams build websites and digital experiences using the latest open source JavaScript and headless technologies, while also delivering a first class in-context live editing UI (you can see it in action at apos3.dev).
Our history in building Apostrophe has always been about improving both the developer experience and the editor experience when working with a CMS. This is deep in the core of our DNA and Apostrophe 3 is a big step forward in both of these pursuits, combining the flexibility and multi-channel support of a headless CMS with the ease of a WYSIWYG website builder.
Here are some of the improvements we're excited about:
• 100% RESTful headless APIs - While Apostrophe 2 has custom APIs and a separate headless module, Apostrophe 3 is powered by RESTful APIs from the ground up. Whether you're building a website or SPA, we've got you covered.
• New editing experience - Now powered by Vue.js, the new editing experience is much faster than in A2. We've completely overhauled the design and UX with superior editor interactions.
• New rich text editor - A3 uses the tiptap rich text editor, a modern Vue-based editor. tiptap is powered by ProseMirror, a rich text editing framework embraced by companies like The New York Times. It's easier to customize and a pleasure to use.
• Improved module architecture - A2 had a learning curve when it came to writing more complex custom project-level code. In A3, we have a clearer structure for modules. Each module has a clearly defined home for methods, event handlers, template helpers, async components, query builders, and more.
• All async/await, no callbacks - Callback-driven code has been completely eliminated from the core of Apostrophe, and all of the JavaScript APIs return promises, so you can await them.
• Async components & lazy loading - A2 developers often asked why they couldn't fetch content from the database from inside a template. Now you can. The async component pattern delivers this feature without cluttering your templates with complex JavaScript. Load what you need, when you need it.
• Unopinionated front end - A2 shipped with jQuery, lodash, momentjs and more. Later, we added the lean option to remove these things. A3 takes this one step further: there are no front-end libraries at all sent to logged-out users, except for a very small vanilla JavaScript helper library for core tasks like communicating with Apostrophe and displaying our video widget. The new library is under 10K gzipped.
Thanks for checking it out, and let us know what you think!
Hi there! Forgive me for not understanding all of the jargon, but is this applicable to things like wordpress? Thanks!
@emengweb Thanks! I still am not quite sure what that is, so I think that means this isn't the product for me, but I appreciate your help! :P
@kayla_willsey It's an alternative to wordpress, oriented toward developers who want to provide their clients with a more intuitive editing experience as well as enjoying a much more efficient and modern development process.
@kayla_willsey
That’s a great question, Kayla!
It could be a product for you if you are involved with picking how your website is built and the expeirnece you will have when editing. Before I go deeper, here is a page where we compare Apostrophe to WordPress: https://apostrophecms.com/compar...
Apostrophe is similar to WordPress in that you can use either to edit the content on a website. There are differences, though. Some of those differences are more meaningful if you are a content editor and others if you are a developer creating the site. Starting with content editors, Apostrophe allows for really delightful in-context live editing of your website. WordPress is typically more form driven so you edit content hit save and see the page previewed in another view. (There are some plugins for Wordpress you can install to change that.) You can also add content on the page easily with Apostrophe and then drag it around. You can play around with Apostrophe 3 here: http://apos3.dev/
For developers, I will try to lay out some of the differences, but please forgive me in advance if it gets too jargon-y. The simple answer is that Apostrophe is written in more modern frameworks that many developers prefer. For instance, Apostrophe is written in Javascript. WordPress is written in PHP . PHP has been used for some time but there is a shift in how websites are being developed since Javascript can now be used for the “backend” and “frontend” coding. PHP requires context shifting between the front-end and back-end to create the code.
Also, Apostrophe 3 is “headless” out of the box so that means you can edit your content in one place and those changes and easily show up on your website, in a mobile app, and other places that might make sense.
From a developer perspective, some of the differences I mentioned above are preference but we think Apostrophe is taking a more modern and flexible approach.
Hope that helps!
@geoffdimasi that makes so much sense, thank you so much, Geoff! The links were very helpful, and you've taught me some new things today- you're awesome! :P
I joined the Apostrophe team earlier this year, just in time to for the launch of this great project. Now we are excited to announce the release of our Apostrophe 3 Alpha. Check it out and connect with our Makers!