September 2022 Summaries

Strapi v4.4 has been released with new features and improvements aimed at enhancing customization and security for users building apps. This release introduces custom fields, allowing users to add unlimited field types to their projects, facilitating easier integration with third-party tools like Shopify and Google Maps. The updated API token system now offers more granular permissions and control over token duration, enhancing security and flexibility. Relations have been moved to the main layout to improve performance and user experience. Additionally, the Strapi marketplace continues to expand with new plugins and providers, and Strapi Cloud is set to launch soon, promising easy deployment and hosting options. Users are encouraged to provide feedback and contribute to Strapi's ongoing development through community calls and the public roadmap.

Strapi, an open-source headless CMS based on Node.js, allows for the decoupling of content management (backend) from the presentation layer (frontend), thereby providing a flexible solution for developing scalable applications. This guide details the process of using Strapi to build a backend for a Notes app and consuming the data with a Remix frontend framework. It outlines setting up a Strapi project, creating and managing content types, generating API tokens, and integrating them with a Remix app, which handles the content presentation. The tutorial includes implementation of CRUD functionalities such as adding and deleting notes through API calls, showcasing the seamless interaction between a headless CMS and a modern frontend framework for efficient content delivery across platforms.

The text provides a detailed step-by-step guide on how to replace the default WYSIWYG editor in Strapi, an open-source headless CMS, with the TinyMCE editor. It begins by outlining the prerequisites, including basic knowledge of JavaScript, ReactJS, and Strapi, and the requirement for a TinyMCE API key. The guide then walks through creating a new Strapi project, generating a new plugin, and configuring it to use TinyMCE. It explains how to set up the necessary directories and files, integrate the TinyMCE library, and ensure seamless media handling via Strapi's Media Library. Additionally, it covers how to customize TinyMCE's functionality through plugins and toolbar settings. Finally, the guide emphasizes the importance of choosing appropriate TinyMCE plugins to suit user needs and warns about potential security issues related to handling HTML content.

This guide teaches how to replace the default WYSIWYG editor (Draftjs) in Strapi with the TinyMCE editor. To follow through this article, you need basic knowledge of JavaScript and ReactJS, a basic understanding of Strapi, a Tiny account, and Node.js installed on your system. The tutorial involves creating a new project, generating a new Strapi plugin, installing TinyMCE library for React, and configuring the editor to work as expected. Finally, you can test the newly created content type with the TinyMCE field in action.

The tutorial provides a detailed guide on building a multilingual news app using Strapi and React.js, emphasizing the use of Strapi's i18n plugin for content internationalization. Strapi, an open-source headless content management system, simplifies backend development by providing ready-made API endpoints for collections without requiring server code. The tutorial demonstrates setting up a Strapi project, creating a "newspost" collection with localization enabled, and adding English and French content. The React.js frontend is developed to interact with the Strapi backend, utilizing components for rendering news lists and individual news items, with language selection capabilities. The guide also covers creating a user interface for adding news entries, switching locales, and managing content, thus highlighting Strapi's efficiency in supporting multiple languages in web applications.

The text discusses the author's experience working remotely for Strapi while traveling in different time zones. It highlights the importance of clear communication and adaptability when working remotely, especially across different time zones. The author emphasizes the use of async communication tools such as Loom, Google Meets, Notion, Slack, and Miro to facilitate remote work. Additionally, the text mentions Strapi's flexible remote-work policy that allows employees to work abroad for less than six months after filling out a form and getting insured. The author shares tips on how to successfully adapt to working in different time zones, including notifying managers and teammates about the change, encouraging async communication, and organizing tasks effectively.

Creating a Strapi plugin allows developers to increase the functionality of the CMS, making it more flexible and customizable. Before starting, it's essential to plan, considering factors such as the problem being solved, clear vision, and choosing between TypeScript or JavaScript development. The process involves creating a new plugin using `npm run strapi generate` or `yarn strapi generate`, then deciding on features like a homepage, settings page, and API communication. It's crucial to visit the Strapi marketplace, forum, and Discord community for research and potential collaboration. Developing plugins requires maintaining updates, features, patches, and including documentation, such as a README.md file, to ensure ease of usage and maintenance. The Strapi community provides valuable resources, including the design system, to help developers create plugins that meet their needs.

The Jamstack architecture pre-rendering process improves the speed, reduces complexity, and reduces hosting costs of a website by generating content during build time instead of every request. However, this process can be problematic for content creation as it requires rendering draft previews at every request, which is not ideal for content creators and editors. To solve this problem, static site generators provide a solution by setting up a Preview Mode that bypasses the pre-rendering process, allowing content editors to view changes on every page request instead of waiting for the complete website build process to run. The guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to create a simple blog website using Strapi and Next.js, including activating the previews mode to improve the content editing experience.

The guide offers a comprehensive tutorial on setting up a blog using Strapi and Next.js, emphasizing the importance of preview modes in Jamstack web development. It explains how pre-rendering, a core feature of Jamstack, enhances website speed, reduces complexity, and cuts hosting costs by generating content during build time instead of at every request. However, this process is not ideal for content creation, as it requires drafts to be rendered with each request. To address this, the guide provides steps to implement a Preview Mode, allowing content editors to see changes instantly without waiting for the complete build process. The tutorial walks through creating a Strapi backend, setting up a Next.js frontend with Tailwind CSS, connecting the two, and configuring dynamic routing for individual blog posts based on their slug. It further details how to set up a preview API route to facilitate a more seamless content editing experience, highlighting the utility of preview modes in improving the user experience for content editors within the Jamstack architecture.

Strapi users can enhance their websites' multilingual capabilities by integrating the Localazy localization plugin, which simplifies the translation process and breaks down language barriers for a global audience. This collaboration addresses the significant portion of the world population that does not speak English, offering seamless content management through Strapi's user interface. Localazy supports over 60 integrations and provides a user-friendly experience with features like machine translation assistance and continuous professional services, thus allowing users to manage or offload translation tasks. The plugin integrates with Strapi's core i18n plugin, enabling automatic language addition and content localization, and it plans to include automation for upload and download processes. Encouraging community involvement, Localazy offers incentives for Strapi plugin developers and contributes financially to the Strapi Open Source community, fostering a multilingual digital environment.

The text provides a comprehensive overview of Strapi, an open-source headless CMS, emphasizing its ability to enhance productivity for both developers and businesses through the use of plugins. It outlines the installation process of Strapi and its plugins, highlighting the ease of customizing website functionalities such as user authentication, content management, video uploading, and content scheduling through the Strapi dashboard. The text details specific plugins, including the Todo plugin for task management, Mux Video Uploader for video content, and others like GoogleAuth and Strapi Notes for authentication and content organization, respectively. Additionally, it underscores the advantages of utilizing the Strapi marketplace's extensive collection of plugins, which streamline development processes and improve website performance, while encouraging further exploration of available resources for users seeking to maximize their application’s capabilities.

The Strapi project can be created using a command line input `npx create-strapi-app my-project` and is an open-source headless content management system that allows developers to use their preferred tools and frameworks during development. Authentication in Strapi can be implemented using Auth0, which provides an adaptable authentication and authorization platform that takes away the pain of developing a full authentication system from scratch for the application. The process involves creating an Auth0 account, configuring the tenant, creating an API, creating an application linked to the API, and enabling necessary details in Strapi. A frontend application can be used to test the authentication flow, with the React login example app being used as an example. Once authenticated, the user is redirected back to the React application with their access token, allowing them to access routes from the Strapi API as a logged-in user.

This tutorial guides developers on implementing authentication in Strapi using Auth0, an adaptable authentication and authorization platform. It covers the process of creating a new API in Auth0, linking it to an application, configuring settings, enabling necessary details in Strapi's dashboard, specifying backend URL in server.js file, launching both Strapi backend and React app, and testing the setup. The tutorial aims to help developers understand and implement authentication and authorization processes effectively in their applications.

The text provides a detailed tutorial on deploying the FoodAdvisor application, a demo app for the open-source headless CMS Strapi, using Kubernetes. It emphasizes the advantages of cloud-native architecture over traditional monolithic applications, highlighting the ease of scalability and management through microservices. The tutorial guides readers through creating a new Strapi project, setting up a local Kubernetes cluster with Minikube, and preparing Docker images for deployment. It explains how to configure and deploy both the backend and frontend components of the application using Kubernetes, including setting up Ingress rules for routing traffic. The process culminates in accessing the deployed FoodAdvisor app and its Strapi admin panel, demonstrating the flexibility and benefits of using a cloud-native approach for development.

The text discusses the advantages of a cloud-native approach in software development, which involves using microservices and containers for optimal resource usage and scalability. It highlights Docker as an open platform for developing, distributing, and running applications, and Kubernetes as a container orchestration system for automated deployment, scaling, and management of containers. The text also introduces Strapi, an open-source headless CMS that separates content from the view, making it ideal for cloud-native architectures. It provides a step-by-step guide on how to leverage Kubernetes to deploy the FoodAdvisor app, a demo app by Strapi.

The text provides a comprehensive guide on deploying a Strapi project on a shared hosting platform, specifically using Namecheap's hosting services, while emphasizing that shared hosting, although cost-effective, may not be the most efficient option compared to cloud or VPS hosting. It outlines the necessary prerequisites such as basic JavaScript knowledge, a working understanding of Strapi, and having Git and Node.js installed. The guide details steps from setting up a local Strapi app, creating a database in Phpmyadmin, and using cPanel to manage the hosting and setup process, including cloning the project from GitHub and configuring Node.js for production. Despite acknowledging the limitations of traditional hosting, the text highlights the ease of access and cost benefits, making it an appealing choice for users with specific needs and budget constraints.

In a detailed tutorial, Mark Munyaka outlines how to integrate Nuxt Previews with Strapi as the backend to address the common issue in the Jamstack ecosystem of lacking real-time content previews. The guide walks through setting up a Nuxt.js application with Strapi, an open-source content management system based on Node.js, to enable dynamic content fetching using client-side JavaScript. This process involves setting up a Nuxt.js application, creating a Strapi project, and connecting the two to allow content previewing in Nuxt.js version 2.13 or later. It provides a step-by-step approach to configuring the necessary files and permissions, creating content types and entries in Strapi, and using Vuex state management to retrieve and display content. The tutorial emphasizes the benefits of using Nuxt Preview for generating static pages, whether for testing or deploying on platforms like GitHub Pages or Netlify, and highlights the flexibility of Strapi in managing content through both the admin UI and API.

This tutorial provides a comprehensive guide for building a job board application using Next.js and Tailwind CSS, with Strapi serving as the headless CMS for managing the backend. It begins by setting up the Strapi project and configuring the necessary data structures, such as job and category collections, to handle job listings efficiently. The guide then walks through setting up a frontend with Next.js, creating dynamic routes to display individual job posts, and using Tailwind CSS for styling. It emphasizes the integration of Strapi's API with the frontend to dynamically fetch and display job data, ensuring that the application is both functional and visually appealing. Additionally, the tutorial offers tips for deploying the application on platforms like Vercel and suggests further exploration with Strapi for additional projects. The tutorial is open source, encouraging users to customize or expand the project as needed.

This tutorial provides a comprehensive guide on building a simple React Native to-do application using Strapi as the backend. It begins with setting up a Strapi project, creating a "todo" content type, and configuring endpoints for interaction with a React Native app. The tutorial details the creation of a Redux-based state management system for handling user data and authentication, including the use of redux-persist for state persistence. It involves setting up React Native components, using libraries such as react-native-paper for UI elements, and implementing navigation with react-navigation. The guide culminates in the creation of a paginated to-do list, enabling users to create, edit, and delete tasks, with changes synchronized across devices through Strapi's REST API.

The tutorial provides a comprehensive guide on building a React Native to-do app with Strapi as the backend, enabling functionalities such as creating, editing, and deleting to-dos on a per-user basis. It begins by setting up a Strapi project and defining a "todo" content type with fields like title, description, and owner, followed by registering endpoints for API interactions. The tutorial then transitions to setting up the React Native app, detailing the creation of a structured directory with components, models, and controllers. It emphasizes integrating essential packages like react-native-paper and redux for state management and persistence. The guide also covers building user authentication, setting up a Redux store, and creating various components and screens for the app, including a TodoList component that handles loading and pagination. The app is designed to synchronize with the Strapi backend, ensuring data consistency across devices.