lucas-brdt268

Posted on Nov 11

Headless Adventures: From CMS to Frontend Without Losing Your Mind (5)

#discuss #webdev #git #tooling

🧾 Version Control for Content: Why Your CMS Needs Git-Like Superpowers

You ever deploy your app, check the homepage, and suddenly your headline says “New Test Post #14”? 😭

Yup. Someone “accidentally” hit publish on a draft.
Welcome to content chaos — where CMS editors move fast and definitely break things.

🧠 The Core Problem

We developers have Git.
We commit, push, and revert with confidence.
Meanwhile, CMS editors have... a “Save” button and hope.

“Who changed the homepage title?”
“Not me.”
“Then why does it say ‘Coming Soon!!!’ in Comic Sans?”

Ladies and gentlemen, we need version control for content.

💾 Why Versioning Matters

Imagine your CMS like a Git repo:

Each publish = a commit
Each rollback = a revert
Each editor = a contributor (with way too much enthusiasm)

With versioning, you can:

Restore deleted content
Track who changed what
Experiment safely (because undo exists)
Sleep better at night 😴

🧩 Example: Strapi or Directus

Modern headless CMSs like Strapi, Directus, and PayloadCMS already give you revision systems — kind of like “mini Git histories” for your content.

A sample record might look like this:

{
  "id": 12,
  "title": "Dockploy + CMS: The Ultimate Pair",
  "version": 7,
  "edited_by": "Lucas",
  "updated_at": "2025-11-05T13:00:00Z"
}

You can open previous versions, compare fields, and even restore old content.
It’s like git diff, but instead of code, you’re diffing between two blog post titles like:

- "Dockploy + CMS: The Ultimate Pain"
+ "Dockploy + CMS: The Ultimate Pair"

Progress. 🧘‍♂️

⚙️ Step 1: Enable Draft & Publish Mode

In Strapi or similar CMSs:

Go to Content Type Settings
Turn on Draft & Publish
Boom — now your editors can save drafts without nuking production.

Because no one wants to see half-written posts live, like:

“Top 10… wait I’ll finish this later.”

🧱 Step 2: Store Version Metadata

You can even extend your CMS model with version fields:

{
  version: {
    type: "number",
    default: 1
  },
  previousVersion: {
    type: "relation",
    target: "api::post.post"
  },
  changeLog: {
    type: "text"
  }
}

This way, you can manually bump versions and keep a full “edit timeline.”

🔄 Step 3: Automate Backups (a.k.a. Don’t Trust Humans)

Even with versioning, mistakes happen.
So automate backups:

Option 1: Export your CMS data nightly to S3 or Google Cloud Storage.
Option 2: Use Dockploy’s scheduled jobs (if available) to run a backup script.
Option 3: Git commit your JSON exports daily — yep, literal content commits.

Because “oops, we lost yesterday’s blog” isn’t a fun Slack message. 😬

🧠 Step 4: Treat Content as Code

If you’re feeling fancy, use the Content-as-Code pattern:

Store your CMS content in Markdown or JSON files
Keep them in a Git repo
Deploy automatically when content changes

Platforms like Netlify CMS or Decap CMS already do this!
Each “edit” becomes a pull request — meaning you can review your editor’s “poetic” title changes before they go live. ✨

🧰 Step 5: Make It Fun

If you want your team to actually use versioning, gamify it.

Example idea:
Every time someone restores a previous version, log:

“🕵️‍♂️ Detective Lucas just reverted a bad commit.”

Positive reinforcement works, even in DevOps.

🧘‍♂️ TL;DR

Give your CMS Git-like powers — drafts, revisions, rollbacks.
Always back up your content automatically.
Treat content changes like code commits.
Review before publishing (humans make typos, lots of them).
Laugh at your mistakes — they’ll make great Dev.to posts later. 😄

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