Needs advice
on
GatsbyGatsbyNetlifyNetlify
and
StrapiStrapi

I was just hired to help an enterprise event production company with their web tools. Due to COVID they are streaming 100% online and need to make hundreds of mini-sites/small-scale apps for each event. They are currently using Squarespace and just making a sub-dir for each new event I i.e., our-squarespace-account/{some-awesome-stream}. This becomes a nightmare when there are several sub-events and events span several days etc.

I am trying to plan a service with the following: - Top level view of all sites we create - Ability to develop a new site locally and push up either to our domain or a custom domain - Each mini-site will be bespoke, but a CMS is needed for producers to edit content and change basic info - Some kind of interactivity and capture of email and name is a must (this can be a separate service) - Eventually, building a client dashboard for them to see statistics - Piecemeal rollout and development of these services

Currently, I have narrowed down using Gatsby as an ssg to make an event page (cloning from one of a few templates). Then I would customize and push it to a Netlify hosted site. I am running into problems with the structure. I want my company to be an umbrella site so we have a top-level view of every site we create, but each client only has access to a simple cms for their event. Content changes should be easy to make via a CMS.

I know this is a lot, so thanks in advance for the input!

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4 upvotes·91.3K views
Replies (2)
Product Owner, UX Lead, UI Dev at EQUA START·

I haven't used Strapi (which looks REALLY COOL), but I've done some non-production hobby-work in NextJS, KeystoneJS, and Parse. For what you're doing - the thin stack of Strapi/Gatsby/Netlify might be enough - but if you ever get beyond basic CMS integration & content display, and need more robust data-sharing, login management, and customized usage tracking or display logic - you might need something a little more robust like Next.js, Keystone, and/or a backend like Parse.

For the "thin-stack" model - you'd likely need to generate a common config/ENV file that sits at the root of each of your sites. These should likely contain generation / CMS access keys (unique to each site) to request data for each deploy build to collect page/site content from the (presumably centralized) CMS.

If you're looking at high-volume of sites, with limited staff, you're going to want to automate access generation and deployment at some point. You might want to look into some orchestration tools to help with some of the deploy / generation / API / CMS key stuff. I've used Azure DevOps in production, and Vercel has an interesting approach I use for hobby/prototype work, and I think Heroku might have some options as well.

Good luck! Hope you kill it!

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3 upvotes·1K views

Hi i used Gatsby strap and other Graphql solutions. i would do an kind of backend where you do your umbrella and or data entry. (i would use meteor for that and do an Graphql service with its data.,..) then you can model all you need in JS and in react you show depending on your requirements. And for provisioning iAd do a kind of hook which does bring together the Gatsby template data and whatever they need. my solution would enable you also to provide some backend services coming from umbrella if needed. but maybe i got your requirements wrong. It is also possible to do all in Strapi,react and Nodejs maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc_ITwxiG-Y&t=4760s gives you a 2nd idea thomas

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1 upvote·963 views
Avatar of Chuck Williams

Chuck Williams

Product Owner, UX Lead, UI Dev at EQUA START