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Setting Up the Content Management

After going thru many stacks, and having many failures and false starts, my current process for setting up content for websites (or any other data for that matter) is follows:

Basic Stack Structure​

Baserow​

I use baserow for the initial data because they have unbelievable UI and easy app builder that greatly simplifies the management of all kinds of data, including images. Ultimately, it's easy to set up a database on postgres, but creating a good UI to manage that data is very hard and a massive pain. However, because Baserow is not necessarily good for some use cases (i.e. still for some strange reason they refuse to allow unique key contraints even though it is postgres on the backend), and I want my own backup and easier API, I use Baserow in combination with Nhost and Cloudflare KV.

Nhost​

Nhost is a great platform that is built on postgres and Hasura. I backup all my data from Baserow into an Nhost database. Out of the box, you can get a standard postgres database and Hasura graphql API. There are tons of other features, but I don't really use them. Incidentally, I tried their Auth and it's good, but requires too much development and I'd rather just using something like Clerk, that does everything including the UI out of the box. I use Nhost to backup all my data on Baserow. Why can't you just use Nhost for data? Well that gets back to the UI problem. They don't have a good UI for the underlying data management. That's where Baserow helps. Incidentally, I've used Hasura for years and I have yet to find a simpler API out of the box for database management. So just storing your data in Nhost provides an option in the future to just manage all the content with Graphql, if you want to eliminate Baserow or use another UI.

Cloudflare KV - Front End Source of Truth​

For the content that I will actually use on the front end, I use Cloudflare KV, which is a basic KV store managed my Cloudflare. Ultimately, Cloudflare KV is the source of truth for what gets shown on the frontend. What's in KV is what the user sees. You can also use something like Redis, but Cloudflare is simpler to set up and maintain and you have the backing of a huge company. It's also easy to manage with a basic Cloudflare Worker. So why store frontend data in KV? Well it's super fast to retrieve this data which is critical for website speed and the API to retreive the data is literally one line. So this to me is the simplest way to display data on a website. Of course, you can just store the data in KV and forget about Basedrow and Nhost, but then again you have that pesky problem of managing the data both from a UI and data integrity standpoint. The UI for Cloudflare KV is horrendous and they don't even allow you to edit metadata for the key/value store. In terms of data integrity, Cloudflare KV is just a KV store, so you have nothing at all for basic data management, like managing structure, uniqueness, relationships etc. For that a classic relational database, like postgres is essential and that's what Baserow and Nhost provide.

Optional: Discourse for Long Form Data with Community Features​

For the actually data, like long posts that require community features and authors, I just use Discourse. More on this at a later date.

The Process​

  1. Create the table structure and initial data on Baserow. Remember to use basic database formalities and don't fall prey to the UI, e.g. name the columns with underscores. Once you are comfortable with the structure then move to step 2.
  2. Duplicate the database structure in Nhost.
  3. Create a Cloudflare KV database in the Cloudflare dashboard - remember to create a live and dev (preview) KV storage.
  4. Create webhook in baserow using a boolean field (when boolean field is updated the webhook fires) that hits a backend API endpoint (I use Cloudflare Workers) that both backs up the data in Nhost and then puts the new data into Cloudflare KV.
  5. Create a backend API (I use Cloudflare Worker for this) which reads the Cloudflare KV
  6. On the frontend end, call the backend API which reads the KV and you have your content in a JSON format which you can then use with any basic website tool. Personally, right now, I use NextJs Pages Router (React) and route requests for content thru the pages/api, which then calls the Cloudflare Workers, but you can also just call the Cloudflare Worker directly as long as you set up some sort of rate limiting! I find NextJs Pages to be the most robust and proven platform available, despite Vercel's attempts to create another platform with NextJs App Router. I'll write it up on another post.

Backend code​

There are really 2 backends that you need:

  • Backend webhook which gets the databae from Baserow and does some data manipulation to eventually insert/update this data into Nhost and Cloudflare KV.
  • Backend API to read the KV for your frontend.

For both of these backends, I use Cloudflare workers, which integrate seamlessly with Cloudflare KV. With recent updates to Cloudflare Workers to support better logging, workflows, and other features, I think Workers is the single best platform to build on for backend functionality. That's for another post. It's important to remember that when you set up the Worker, you must set up different environments, so you can easily manage dev and live environments

Frontend code​

For the frontend, I juse NextJs Pages Router and just get the data from KV in Static Props and pass it down to the React component. I create the paths by calling a list on the KV. Per above, for long form content I use Discourse, and I integrate Discourse Community with that on a subdomain. To differentiate between live and dev KV, you can just call the different Workers URLs based on the environment set up in Cloudflare KV.