Is Strapi the best CMS for Gatsby.js?

Gatsby.js is one of the most widely used open source technologies today due to its various plugins and the ease of integration with other frameworks or even with other CMS to create dynamic and functional web pages.

Gatsby.js is mainly used to create high-performance static websites and Progressive Web Apps. To achieve this, it makes use of advanced technologies such as ReactJS, Webpack, GraphQL, modern ES6 + JavaScript, and CSS.

What is Gatsby.js: Main Features

• Allows you to create unique pages based on templates. Create a shared page layout to include elements such as headers and footers.
• Migration of images, videos, GIFs and other media to your site.
• Their ecosystem offers everything from CMS integrations to image optimizations.
• Pull content and data from wherever you live (a CMS, the file system, a spreadsheet, a database) into Gatsby using plugins.
• Gatsby provides a wealth of tools to get your performance fast right out of the box.

What is a CMS?

Gatsby.js can be integrated with a CMS to enhance it and give it more dynamism. Before knowing the reasons why it should be done or even the best CMS for this technology, we must define what this term consists of.

CMS stands for Content Management System. Basically, it is a software tool that allows the user or developer to create and manage a web page. Among its main functions are the creation and subsequent management of a website, page maintenance and administration.

The reason why Gatsby.js needs a CMS integration

To answer this question, the main operation of Gatsby.js should be reviewed: this is a technology specially designed to generate static sites, this means that the pages are processed as static files and are retrieved by the server at the time of creation. This process increases the performance of the website and greatly improves all SEO, an important aspect for any website built with a CMS.

Websites and applications built with Gatsby are as fast as possible. Page changes without reloading and hot reload editing make adjusting pages incredibly fast and provide a seamless experience for users in real time.

Strapi CMS and its integration with Gatsby.js

One of the most recommended CMS to pair with Gatsby.js is Strapi, a fast technology that works with Node.js and can deliver content with GraphQL. This CMS is one of the best to integrate with Gatsby.

On their official website they mention some benefits of this integration “Being a static site generator brings many advantages: performance, security, lower scaling cost, but also an excellent developer experience. Gatsby brings tremendous benefits to content creators and developers by helping to solve many of the challenges with the headless approach.”

For these reasons, choosing Strapi as the CMS to integrate with Gatsby.js is one of the best options. In addition, it can also be integrated with other CMS such as Drupal or Wordpress to maximize its functions.

Our projects with Gatsby.js

At Rootstack we have used Gatsby.js in multiple projects with our clients, we even use it to improve our own website. A technology was needed to replace a project that was no longer scalable and in which all implementations had to fulfill several functions. The team of experts decided to turn to Gatsby.js to fix it.

Gatsby.js generates static sites which is very beneficial when it comes to performance, the site has a fast load time due to this. Another benefit of this technology is SEO handling, no extra effort or integration with an additional library was needed to improve SEO.

Additionally, through Gatsby Cloud a fairly fluid development flow was achieved since it has an integration with the git repository of the Rootstack website.

At Rootstack we have a team of experts in this technology who are prepared to face any project and lead it to success. Contact us and let's start working together.

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