This is the dashboard UI now. I like a minimal UI.

#buildinpublic

Now the most basic features are ready for Spinal CMS. 🤯

So added authentication and the correct associations between content and the creators.

You can now:

- create an account
- log in
- invite a member with an url

Basic, but it works. #buildinpublic

Onto some UI work. 👨‍🎨

All had a good weekend? ✨

Markdown is great, but you really need to have a preview too. Keeping it simple with one parsing engine, but likely need others (with more/less options) later too.

#buildinpublic

Now that you can connect with your GitHub account, let's setup your blogposts (most requested: other content will follow).

Simple to set up:

- choose your repo
- choose the framework (eg. @bridgetownrb, @jekyllrb, etc)
- source path
- ✅

#buildinpublic

Worked on adding oauth integration with GitHub. This allows you to simply connect and be redirect back to Spinal CMS.

Tokens are stored encrypted (for obvious reasons: never store api tokens unencrypted!).

Also some UI work for the Integrations page. 🎨

#buildinpublic

Moved some expensive code (eg. fetching- and publishing) content into background jobs. Keeps the app snappy.

#buildinpublic

You can now push updated blogpost to GitHub. It will create a new commit on your default branch.

Here it will likely be picked up by your CI/CD.

#buildinpublic

You can now add a new post from Spinal CMS. ✍

it opens the edit post screen right away with the body front and center.

#buildinpublic

#buildinpublic

Another quick one today: quite fun! 😎

Fields are automatically transformed in the correct input type, eg. text, datetime and select.

Really useful as most of your content writers might be less tech-savvy.

#buildinpublic

Quick update today as it's the weekend. 🏖

Can update the frontmatter now in Spinal CMS too. Really magical in a way. 🧙‍♀️

#buildinpublic

Am now able to extract the body of the markdown files too.

Even more cool, I can update it already right from Spinal CMS. 😊

And the updated body gets serialised back to a real markdown file. 👯‍♀️

#buildinpublic

Updated parsing and serializing just now. Works with nesting like tags and authors, but also key/value nesting (eg. Image > Caption). 🕺

#buildinpublic

Got parsing working on Wednesday. Now also the other way around.

Created and updated content can now be returned as the same file as it was fetched from your repo.

#buildinpublic

Got parsing of the markdown with frontmatter files working.

Every static site generator we want to support uses markdown with frontmatter.

Got a really versatile parser that checks for strings, text, datetime and select fields. 🤯

#buildinpublic

Got some basic fetching of the content from a hard-coded repo + path in place.

I like to play around and get something working quickly before refactoring in more reusable code.

#buildinpublic

Spinal CMS was previously an internal tool to get marketers help me with blog writing.

I love my the tool I use (@bridgetownrb), but no super -easy way to collaborate without any installs or set up.

After showing it to a few fellow founders, they said:

#buildinpublic

Want to get on the list to get early access? Head over to
spinalcms.com for more info.

We will soon also be featured on @betalist btw.

#buildinpublic

Hello #buildinpublic! For the next few weeks I'll take on a journey, step by step, of building Spinal CMS. A minimal CMS for static site generators.

Simply connect your GitHub account and you are ready to collaborate with your content writers.

We start with an empty state. 😱