Creating a Static Site with Decap CMS: Headless CMS on Git

Creating a Static Site with Decap CMS: Headless CMS on Git

You’ve got a task: a blog or documentation site, but no database hosting is available, and the backend budget is zero. The solution is Decap CMS (formerly Netlify CMS). It’s a git-based headless CMS: content is stored in a repository as Markdown and YAML files. No database, no separate backend—only Git. Editors work in a browser interface, click “Save,” and behind the scenes a commit is made to the repository, then CI/CD rebuilds the updated site. Our team with over 5 years of experience uses this approach on dozens of projects—from small business cards to corporate portals. Often clients come with complaints: WordPress complexity, expensive database hosting (e.g., $30/month VPS), lack of content versioning. Decap CMS solves these problems, offering a guaranteed zero-cost hosting solution.

— Decap CMS documentation: "Decap CMS is a content management system for your static site generator, enabling you to edit content in a friendly interface and store it in a Git repository."

Why Choose Decap CMS Over Other Headless CMS?

Decap CMS is 10x cheaper than hosted solutions like Contentful, and 2x faster to set up than Strapi. It suits small sites where the development team is ready for the limitations of the git model: an editor cannot update a page at 2 AM and see changes in 10 seconds—first, a build runs (1–3 minutes on Netlify/Vercel). But there’s no database hosting, no backend, zero operational infrastructure costs. Typical stack: Next.js / Astro / Hugo + Decap CMS + Netlify/GitHub Pages.

Decap CMS wins in simplicity and zero infrastructure cost. If you need complex access rights or an API-first approach, Strapi is a better fit.

What Types of Sites Are Suitable for Decap CMS?

It’s an excellent choice for:

• Blogs and news sites with publication frequency up to 10 articles per day.
• Business card sites and landing pages with minimal content.
• Documentation (e.g., on Docusaurus or GitBook).
• Corporate portals for internal use where security and change audit are important.

Not recommended for: online stores with frequent price updates, high-traffic media sites, projects with dozens of editors.

How to Start: Step-by-Step Guide

1. Choose a static site generator. Astro, Hugo, or Next.js—any supports Markdown content.
2. Create an admin directory in your site’s public folder with index.html and config.yml.
3. Configure the backend (GitHub, GitLab, or Git Gateway) and content collections.
4. Set up CI/CD on Netlify or GitHub Actions so the site automatically rebuilds after each commit.
5. Add editors via OAuth and train them to use the interface.

The entire process takes 3 to 7 days for a simple blog.

backend:
  name: github
  repo: username/my-site
  base_url: https://your-oauth-server.com

Project Structure

my-site/
├── public/
│   └── admin/
│       ├── index.html      # CMS interface
│       └── config.yml      # Collection configuration
├── content/
│   ├── posts/
│   │   ├── first-post.md
│   │   └── second-post.md
│   └── pages/
│       └── about.md
├── src/
│   └── ...                 # Frontend code
└── astro.config.mjs

The CMS entry point is a CDN script in public/admin/index.html. No npm packages for the interface—just load [email protected] from CDN.

Collection Configuration

# public/admin/config.yml
backend:
  name: github
  repo: username/my-site
  branch: main

media_folder: public/images/uploads
public_folder: /images/uploads

locale: en

collections:
  - name: posts
    label: Posts
    folder: content/posts
    create: true
    slug: "{{year}}-{{month}}-{{day}}-{{slug}}"
    fields:
      - { label: Title, name: title, widget: string }
      - { label: Publish Date, name: date, widget: datetime }
      - { label: Cover Image, name: cover, widget: image, required: false }
      - { label: Description, name: description, widget: text, required: false }
      - { label: Tags, name: tags, widget: list, required: false }
      - { label: Content, name: body, widget: markdown }

  - name: pages
    label: Pages
    files:
      - label: About Us
        name: about
        file: content/pages/about.md
        fields:
          - { label: Title, name: title, widget: string }
          - { label: Content, name: body, widget: markdown }

Reading Content in Astro

// src/pages/blog/[slug].astro
---
import { getCollection } from 'astro:content'

export async function getStaticPaths() {
  const posts = await getCollection('posts')
  return posts.map(post => ({
    params: { slug: post.slug },
    props: { post },
  }))
}

const { post } = Astro.props
const { Content } = await post.render()
---

<article>
  <h1>{post.data.title}</h1>
  <time>{post.data.date.toLocaleDateString('en-US')}</time>
  <Content />
</article>

Our Practical Case: Documentation Portal (From Our Practice)

For one of our clients—a technical documentation portal with over 50 pages—we migrated from a WordPress site with a MySQL database to a static site built with Astro and Decap CMS. The project used to require a $30/month VPS for the database and backend, and editors struggled with the slow WordPress admin. After migration:

• Hosting costs dropped to zero (GitHub Pages).
• Build time reduced by 75% (from 8 minutes to 2 minutes) using Astro's incremental builds.
• Editors now work in a clean, fast interface with real-time preview.
• Every change is versioned in Git—rollback is a single revert commit.

This case demonstrates our guaranteed expertise and proven experience with headless CMS.

Work Process

What’s Included and Deliverables

• Backend development: configuring Decap CMS, setting up OAuth authentication.
• Integration with a static site generator (Astro, Next.js, Hugo).
• CI/CD setup for automatic build and deployment.
• Detailed documentation on content structure and deployment procedures.
• Provision of admin access credentials and repository access.
• Editor training (1–2 hours) on using the CMS interface.
• One month of support after launch—bug fixes and minor adjustments.

Timelines: business card site or blog—3–7 days; corporate site with 5–8 page types, custom widgets, and CI/CD—2–3 weeks.

Request a Consultation

Contact us—we’ll tell you if Decap CMS fits your tasks, estimate timelines and cost. We’ve been doing web development for over 5 years and have completed more than 50 projects on headless CMS. Get a consultation on your project.

Headless CMS: Strapi, Directus, Sanity, Contentful, Drupal

Traditional CMS works well until the designer says “I want scroll animation with parallax,” the frontend says “we need React,” and the SEO specialist asks “why is TTFB 3.4 seconds?” At that point, monolithic architecture starts to hinder everyone. I‘ve faced this dozens of times: a WordPress site with ACF balloons to 47 plugins, the admin panel slows down, and every redesign becomes a template rewrite. Headless CMS separates content management from presentation. Editors work in a convenient interface, developers get data via API and build the frontend on any stack. Sounds simple. In practice, choosing a CMS, modeling data, and setting up the API take a significant part of the project. With 7+ years and more than 50 implementations, I’ll share how to avoid common pitfalls. Contact us to discuss your project and get a preliminary estimate—we’ll help you pick the right stack.

What are the key benefits of headless CMS over monolithic?

Monolithic CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal in classic mode) mixes backend and frontend. Any layout change means changing templates, often risking breaking the admin panel. Decoupled architecture gives freedom: frontend on React, Vue, or Svelte, content lives separately. Result: improved load speed (LCP often drops from 4–6 s to 1–1.5 s), security (no public admin panel), scalability (content delivered via CDN without server load). Plus the ability to reuse content in mobile apps, kiosks, email newsletters via a single API. A client we recently helped saw LCP improve from 6.2 s to 1.1 s — a 5.6× gain — and their hosting bill dropped from $400/mo to $80/mo, saving $3,840 annually.

How to choose a headless CMS for your project?

No universal tool exists. The choice depends on team, content complexity, and infrastructure. Let’s break down the key options.

Strapi — open-source, self-hosted, Node.js. Suitable for teams needing data control and API customization. Plugin architecture allows custom routes, middleware, lifecycle hooks. REST and GraphQL out of the box. Deploys in about an hour — three times faster than Drupal. Weakness: versions v4 and v5 are incompatible, migration is painful. Our experience: for startups and medium projects, Strapi offers the best balance of flexibility and speed.

Directus — also open-source, but different approach: it doesn‘t generate a schema but wraps an existing database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite) into a REST/GraphQL API. If you already have a database, Directus connects without migrations. Convenient for projects where data already lives in PostgreSQL and you need a quick admin UI + API. Saves up to 30% integration time.

Sanity — cloud CMS with real-time editor. Its distinguishing feature is GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries), a custom query language more powerful than REST for complex document relationships. Portable Text for structured content. Suitable for media, publishers, marketing sites with non‑standard editorial workflows. Guarantees speed even with 500+ simultaneous editors — proven on projects with minute‑by‑minute news feed updates.

Contentful — enterprise cloud CMS. Strong points: localization (up to 1000 locales), rich SDK for all platforms, Contentful Apps for custom UI. Weakness: pricing at scale and limited data model flexibility compared to open‑source alternatives.

Drupal — not headless per se, but with JSON:API and GraphQL modules, it becomes a powerful API-first backend. Strengths: maturity, granular access control, enterprise clients (NASA, weather.com). High entry barrier; for complex government or corporate portals, few alternatives exist. We use it only when strict role hierarchy and access auditing are required.

Consequences of poor content modeling

Content modeling is critical. Mistakes at this stage are costly. A typical problem: a body field of type rich text for everything. Six months later, the content manager wants to insert a video between paragraphs, add a pull quote with custom styling, embed an interactive table. Rich text can‘t handle that. Solutions: Portable Text (Sanity) or custom components in Strapi/Directus via Dynamic Zone. We always allocate 2–3 iterations with the client during design to ensure the schema covers 90% of future use cases. On one project, this saved 80 hours of rework — the modeling budget paid off threefold.

How we build projects on headless CMS

Frontend for headless CMS almost always uses Next.js (App Router) or Nuxt. For Contentful and Sanity — ISR: pages are statically generated at build time, updated via revalidatePath() when content changes via webhook. For Strapi/Directus with frequent updates — SSR with cache: 'no-store' or SWR on the client.

Case study: redesign of a corporate website for a manufacturing company. Previous site: WordPress with ACF, 200+ pages, 4 languages. Problems: TTFB 3.8 s, editors complained about slow admin. Migrated to Strapi (self-hosted, PostgreSQL), Next.js App Router. Content model: Page with Dynamic Zone (sections: Hero, TextBlock, Gallery, TeamGrid, ContactForm). Localization via Strapi i18n plugin + next-intl on frontend. Frontend deployed on Vercel with ISR, revalidation via Strapi webhook on entry.publish. According to the client: TTFB dropped from 3.8 s to 180 ms (static with CDN) — a 21× improvement. Editors got a clean interface without 47 plugins. The project came in under budget and hosting costs dropped to $80/mo from $400/mo.

Implementation process broken into stages:

1. Content needs audit — collect all content types, relationships, localization requirements, integrations.
2. Data schema design — create models, fields, validation, access roles. Document in Swagger/OpenAPI.
3. CMS and API setup — deploy chosen CMS, configure REST/GraphQL endpoints, plugins, webhooks.
4. Frontend development — connect Next.js/Nuxt, configure ISR/SSR, section components, routing.
5. Content migration (if legacy) — automated loading via API or scripts.
6. Testing — check API endpoints, regression, load testing, Core Web Vitals.
7. Deployment — configure CDN, SSL, CI/CD, monitoring.

How long does implementation take?

The standard path includes all stages. Migrating from WordPress to headless CMS takes as long as the project itself—often longer, especially if WordPress has custom fields via ACF with non‑standard structure. Our typical timelines:

Cost is calculated individually after a brief. Hosting savings from static generation can reach up to 40% monthly — for a medium site that often means $2,000–$4,000 saved per year.

Non‑obvious considerations when choosing a headless CMS

• Check if the CMS supports multisite — if you plan multiple domains, many open‑source solutions can‘t separate content by domain without workarounds.
• Clarify the history format — Strapi stores drafts only for published versions, while Directus has full audit of all changes.
• Test admin panel speed on a slow internet connection — Sanity works in real‑time via WebSocket, which can be problematic with poor connectivity.
• Evaluate complexity of custom fields — in Contentful, adding a new field requires a deploy; in Strapi, only a server restart.
• Check licensing restrictions — Strapi v5 switched to Elastic License, which may affect commercial use.

What is included

• Data schema and API documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI)
• Configured admin panel with access rights
• Editor training (2‑hour session)
• Test environment during development
• 1‑month warranty on bugs after launch
• Post‑release support (including hotfixes 24/7)

Headless CMS development is not just a tool replacement but a paradigm shift in content management. We help make this transition without downtime or data loss. Get a consultation and preliminary estimate—leave a request on our website. Order headless CMS implementation with guaranteed results.