August has been a month full of incredible changes that we don't want to keep back from you! Along with the existing Middleman plugin, we've also released integrations for Jekyll and Hugo, enabled HTTPS by default on every site and introduced a new way of generating structured content.
Introducing a new SSG-agnostic plugin!
You asked for it, we made it possible: DatoCMS is now integrable with almost any static site generator thanks to a simple but extremely flexible command-line tool. We've already released official documentation and working examples for Hugo and Jekyll.
This is just the beginning: in the following weeks we'll continue adding official support to other popular SSGs (Hexo, Pelican, Gatsby, etc).
Secure by default
One of the greatest advantages of a static website is being virtually unbreakable: we want DatoCMS to guarantee you an equal level of security and tranquility. Starting this week, every administrative area is served in HTTPS for free, wheter you're using a custom domain (ie. admin.my-site.com) or one of our internal domains (ie. foo-bar.admin.datocms.com). The best part: you don't have to do nothing, it just works.
Link field type just got smarter!
Fun fact: everyone hates WYSIWYG editors: developers know they produce dirty code, designers fear the introduction of unwanted styling, editors struggle to use them. Sure, DatoCMS features a WYSIWYG editor since day one, but we want to keep it simple and lightweight: no inline images or other potentially dangerous stuff.
This week we just added the ability for a field of type "Links" to contain items of different type. This small change allows to offer a better alternative than over-complicated WYSIWYG editors.
Practical example:
Define set of item types in your site (ie. "Text", "Text + Side image", "Quote" and "Image Gallery");
Create an Article item type and, along with a Title field, add a Content field of type "Links" — yep, you heard it right, not "Multi-line text" field, a "Links" field;
Give this field an "Embedded form" presentation mode, and allow it to contain any of the item types created in step 1.
Your editors can now create advanced content layouts mixing and matching different pre-defined structured blocks.
Stay tuned for more!
The enthusiasm we got from your feedbacks in these first 3 weeks of public beta is simply astonishing and makes us giggle. It feels great to build something useful for a lot of people!
We're already working on some great new features we'll be shipping in the following weeks: Markdown editor, advanced items search, more granular way of managing permissions, content versioning, multiple publishing environments.. You've got some more ideas? Let us know!