Strapi - Open source Node.js Headless CMS to easily build customisable APIs

[marcusquinn]

Similar but different:

Directus is more generic and app orientated and general databasing.

Strapi is more like a backend for Blogs similar to Ghost & Wordpress.

I'd say they are both leaders in their speciality and have high value and large audiences that I'm sure would appreciate finding them on Cloudron.

I'm looking forward to working with both of them TBH but Directus particularly for rapid database schema design work.

[girish]

@marcusquinn Thanks for the info. It seems there is a sudden interest in strapi (maybe because they recently raised some $$ ).

Directus is indeed as you said. It's like a fast SQL database design/prototyping tool. Have to look into strapi after that.

[marcusquinn]

@girish Yeah, the whole JAMstack movement is growing. Having these options would make Cloudron a credible alternative to Netlify hosting.

I'm sure Directus & Strapi will be popular with devs, the next most popular one being NetlifyCMS. Again, would capture a lot of "{platform name} hosting" searches.

[msbt]

Is anyone working on that? Just got an inquiry if that's something Cloudron can do

If noone is on it, I might give it a shot, but I've never packaged node.js before, probably gonna be a bumpy one.

[girish]

@msbt For node app, you can look at https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/verdaccio-app . If you can get this going, I will be happy to finish it up.

[msbt]

Ok I've got it to work, but there are some things missing, maybe you can take over from here @girish

Here's the repo: https://git.cloudron.io/msbt/strapi-app

You build it, install it, jump on the terminal, cwd into /app/pkg/cloudron and run yarn build. The build process requires 2GB of RAM, I tried with less and it failed a few times. This step should eventually go into the start.sh, but I was rebuilding a lot, that's why it's still there.

After that the adminpanel is available in /admin where you can create your first user and add data.

What's not working (from what I can see):

• Email (the plugins are installed (nodemailer and such), but something must be wrong with my plugins.js, at some point it complained about a self-signed cert, after that I couldn't get it to work at all)
• Installing/uninstalling plugins, that's why all 7 are installed by default now

Other than that, tests are missing, but it doesn't look so bad.

[marcusquinn]

Their email newsletter update today:

---

Hello

Thank you for your interest in Strapi. Here's a bunch of updates about our product and pricing.

New hosted demo

For those of you who did not get a chance to try out all the features that Strapi provides out of the box, we now have a brand new and optimized hosted trial experience. Launch a Strapi project with sample data in seconds without having to install anything on your machine!

Strapi 3.2 is now available!

Last week we announced Strapi 3.2 with the long-awaited feature: Draft & Publish!

In short, it lets you save your content as a draft, edit and publish it at any time. Join our online meetup to see the feature demo and know what other product updates are planned!

Starters library and templates

We added a new template option to the create-strapi-app CLI. With these templates, you can create new Strapi projects that already have content types and plugins pre-configured for you. Browse the Strapi starters library for corporate sites, portfolio or blogs.

Pricing update: introducing the Bronze Plan

Strapi Enterprise Bronze Edition is all about giving you easier access to custom roles for a discounted price of $29 monthly.

Read through the details in the pricing page.

Stay tuned for more news!

Cheers,

The Strapi team

[A Former User]

@marcusquinn @girish Any updates on this?

[msbt]

@edapm I've pushed the latest version which has various updates (.ie. latest base image and such) and basically it works, the only 2 things that make problems are email and the slugify feature from node.js.

Here's the repo where you can check it out: https://git.cloudron.io/msbt/strapi-app

After you've built and installed it, you have to run /usr/local/bin/gosu cloudron:cloudron yarn build in the terminal to build the adminpanel, this step can be added to the start.sh as well, but I wanted to do it manually for the time being, because it takes quite a while on slower machines. Talking of which: this step requires 2,5GB+ RAM, so make sure your machine has plenty available. After that you can create an admin user.

Email:

• When I try to use SMTPS, it says error Error: Couldn't send test email: Greeting never received.
• When using SMTP: error Error: Couldn't send test email: Mail command failed: 550 Authenticated user strapi.app@example.com cannot send mail as .

As for the slugify issue: I followed the tutorial from here to dynamically create slugs for collections, but as soon as I edit the modelname.js in /api/collectionname/models/ and add const slugify = require('slugify');, strapi crashes with Error: Cannot find module 'slugify' even though it's in node_modules and referred to from other places - no idea why, if I build strapi on an empty machine with just a few commands, it works without any issues:

apt update
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo bash -
apt-get install -y nodejs
npm install --global yarn
yarn create strapi-app cloudron --quickstart --no-run
cd cloudron/
yarn add pg slugify strapi-provider-email-smtp
yarn strapi install email documentation graphql
yarn build
yarn develop

So if you don't need email or slugs, you're good to go

[msbt]

Ok I just realized that strapi already has a built in slug-system, so that solution I was working on was already obsolete (there's a UID field available which can take any other field and slugify it properly). This means the only thing that's missing is email

[A Former User]

Cool! I'm curious to see how it stacks up to the node version of Directus. Definitely going to give it a shot.

[msbt]

@atrilahiji I tried Directus the other day and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to create a simple repeater for a textfield

[marcusquinn]

Since finding cloudpanel.io, a part of me is wondering if it would be better for people to use something like that for Dev Ops, where it's already done, and the general focus of that platform:

• https://www.cloudpanel.io/supported-applications/

And, Cloudron focuses more on Personal Productivity & Business Ops apps, for now at least.

Strapi looks great, but I bet something like Cal.com or tldraw.com being packaged would give everyone here more value. Best of both worlds from platforms each focused on what they do best, and have most existing users asking for.

[LoudLemur]

Thank you for helping move my AppRequest content t o this thread.

[LoudLemur]

What is the latest on Strapi?

[philkunz]

Any update here? This would come in really handy right now

[philkunz]

It would make Cloudron the PERFECT company base setup. Mail, Gitea, Verdaccio, Minio, element, ... and Strapi.

[girish]

@philkunz not worked on this yet.

Anyone know how this compares to Directus?