Lately I’ve been working with Apostrophe CMS, a NodeJS base content management system. The Apostrophe website lists for features “in-context-editing, schema-driven content types, flexible widgets, and more.” Coming from WordPress, I encountered some familiar concepts like themes and plugins approached from a new perspective. I was excited to take on Apostrophe to say the least.
My first project is still ongoing. However I wanted to note a few “first impressions” after living with Apostrophe for a month.
My biggest questions starting off with Apostrophe was surrounding Asset Management, and how do I use a Library like Bootstrap or Foundation. Other problems that I encountered were mostly caused by my own ignorance, like not knowing that the button tag having a default type of submit, or not understanding how Node parses folders looking for assets.
Despite these problems, I am starting to get a handle for how to shape Apostrophe into what I need. Tom Boutell, the lead developer for Apostrophe, is very active on StackOverflow, answering all questions about Apostrophe CMs. There is also a support forum available. I found these tools to be very helpful, and encouraged me to try more difficult things with Apostrophe.
With Apostrophe, everything extends something else pretty much. It took some time to understand the difference between pieces and modules and pages and widgets, but once I got going, everything became less daunting. The flexible nature of Apostrophe will surely inspire creativity as I continue to dive deeper into the CMS.