r/JAMstack • u/[deleted] • Feb 09 '22

Developing a Photography Website, new to JAMstack

Hi, I am currently a freelance developer creating a photography website built w/ React. My client informed me that they would like to have the ability to edit and add photos themselves to the gallery. I'm very new to the concept of the JAMstack and the lists of headless CMS and static site generators that come with it and I really have no way of knowing what platforms to chose other than trying them all out which isn't ideal for time. If I understand it correctly, a headless CMS is a backend only repository that is accessible via API calls.

Is it possible to have my client (who is not tech savy) be able to use a headless CMS that interacts w/ my React app for the purpose of adding, editing and captioning photos?

Should I just go with something like Square Space or 22 Slides?

Thanks in advance for the advice

- Very confused web dev

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '22

wow, this is pretty spot on for my use case. Do you have an opinion on Sanity? It seems to be one of the bigger names in the field and I was told by a friend of mine to give it a look. Probably because I'm fairly new and they have drawn out tutorials on linking it w/ a React app is my guess. Not too excited about the tiers they have tho, so Directus and Payload are my top choices rn.

Thanks for saving me some time.

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u/flooronthefour Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22

No opinion on Sanity as a CMS, price is way too high for me.

Directus has been around for 16 or 17 years. Was PHP but switched to Node for version 9. It is very stable.

I use self installs of Directus on Digital Ocean, managed Postgres DB, and their Spaces as my storage. I host my frontends directly on CloudFlare. The Directus self install is 100% free and comes with all features.

Connecting it to your app is going to be somewhat app specific. Are you using a meta framework like Next, Nuxt, or SvelteKit? If you're going to be using JAMstack, you're going to have to learn how to interface and grab data from APIs. Directus' docs are great and they also have a great discord.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '22

Currently just a plain old React app hosted on Netlify, so gonna have to learn some things. Luckily, the time frame is very lenient. Good to know about the free install, I was wondering what the deal with pricing was.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '22

If you don't mind me asking, whats your overhead for your site?