Best CMSs for Nuxt

Nuxt.js is a powerful Vue.js framework for Vue applications with features like file system routing, built-in server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), and client-side rendering (CSR) capabilities. If you come from a React background, Nuxt.js is for Vue what Next.js is for React. Nuxt is used in production by many frontend teams from top-notch companies. It is also well received in the open-source community and has excellent documentation, making it one of the top choices for building applications where the frontend stack is based on Vue and the focus is on building high-performance frontend applications.

#What is a Nuxt CMS?

Depending on your application needs and its future prospects, you might or might not require a separate backend app. A CMS (Content Management System) for Nuxt enables teams to manage and deliver data efficiently to Nuxt applications; it provides an interface for developers to model the data into tables and relations and also allows content teams to manage data and assets like images, videos, and more. A CMS removes the hassle of building and maintaining a separate backend service for many applications. For common use cases like building websites, e-commerce stores, blog pages, and applications that need CRUD ops and customization to some extent, using a CMS is one option to consider so that content teams, marketers, and developers can work seamlessly on the entire application for their daily operations. Many headless CMSs integrate seamlessly with Nuxt by providing Nuxt Modules or APIs/SDKs that allow content management programmatically.

#What to Consider When Choosing a CMS for Nuxt Projects

When picking a CMS for Nuxt, keep these factors in mind:

Performance: A CMS should deliver fast API responses and handle high traffic efficiently. Features like CDN, caching, and high-performance endpoints improve load times and support scaling up your project seamlessly when needed.

User Experience: A simple, intuitive interface helps non-technical users like marketers and content editors manage content easily. Features like filtering, rich text editing, media management, live collaboration, and workflow tools enhance productivity.

Developer Experience: A CMS should offer well-documented REST or GraphQL APIs / SDK for smooth integration. If the CMS has Nuxt module support, then the integration becomes even easier, leading to cleaner and more maintainable code.

Customization: The ability to create flexible content models, custom fields, and automation tools allows developers to tailor the CMS to project needs.

Pricing: CMS pricing varies from free open-source solutions to enterprise plans. We should consider factors like API limits, storage, and team size to avoid unexpected costs later on.

Hosting: Some CMSs are cloud-based (SaaS) like Hygraph, Contentful, and more, while others like Strapi are open source and offer both self-hosted and SaaS options. Cloud hosting reduces maintenance effort, while self-hosting can be cost-efficient for many use cases.

Integrations & Features: A CMS should support third-party integrations like integrating external APIs for resolving some fields in a schema model, analytics, e-commerce, and CRMs. Features like multi-language support and structured content APIs improve flexibility.

Security & Access Control: Role-based permissions, authentication options, and compliance with security standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2 ensure data safety.

Support & Community: High-quality documentation, a good developer community, and customer support for paid plans are the new standards for a good CMS today.

#Best CMSs For Nuxt

Integrating a CMS with Nuxt is as simple as consuming data using the API/SDK provided by the CMS. Consuming data from traditional CMSs like Wordpress would not work as they do not expose APIs or SDKs to clients. Nuxt can be integrated with any CMS that exposes a Rest or GraphQL API or provides an SDK. Below are some of our top CMS recommendations for a Nuxt application and a technical brief on how to integrate those CMS’s in your Nuxt application for client-side rendered components. For this guide, we will assume that the models and content for different CMS have already been set up and need to be integrated in Nuxt.

Hygraph

Hygraph is a modern, GraphQL-native Headless CMS designed to help developers build performant and scalable applications. Hygraph supports efficient data fetching and integration with applications built on any front-end tech through GraphQL API and a JavaScript SDK. It is fully cloud-based. You can try it out for free by following this quickstart guide, setting up your data models, and getting a ready-to-use API within minutes. According to me, the best part about Hygraph is its powerful and flexible GraphQL API and the user experience provided by the management dashboard.

We can use any graphql client of our choice to query the Hygraph API endpoint. Apollo is a well-known and standard GraphQL client for other frontend frameworks as well, so for this example, we will use Nuxt Apollo.

First, install the package using the following command

npm i -D @nuxtjs/apollo@next

Next, configure Apollo Client in our nuxt config and connect it with our Hygraph project.

nuxt.config.ts

export default defineNuxtConfig({  
  modules: ['@nuxtjs/apollo'],  
  apollo: {  
    clients: {  
      default: {  
        httpEndpoint: ${process.env.HYGRAPH_API_URL},  
        httpLinkOptions: {  
          headers: {  
            Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.HYGRAPH_AUTH_TOKEN}`  
          }  
        }  
      }  
    },  
  },  
  compatibilityDate: '2024-11-01',  
  devtools: { enabled: true }  
});

This is a basic setup for our Apollo client. For more advanced configuration options, please check the documentation. Next, we can define our GraphQL operations and use it in Vue components. Nuxt Apollo provides nuxt-friendly composables like useQuery, useAsyncQuery, useLazyAsyncQuery, useMutation, and more. These can be used to make GraphQL requests as shown below seamlessly.

graphql/queries.ts

export const GET_POSTS = gql`  
query getPosts{  
  posts {  
    id  
    title  
    body  
  }  
}`;

pages/hygraph.vue

<template>  
  <div>  
    <h1>Posts</h1>  
    <div v-if="loading">Loading...</div>  
    <div v-else-if="error">Error: {{ error.message }}</div>  
    <ul v-else>  
      <li v-for="post in posts" :key="post.id">  
        <h2>{{ post.title }}</h2>  
        <p>{{ post.body }}</p>  
      </li>  
    </ul>  
  </div>  
</template>

<script setup>  
import { GET_POSTS } from '~/graphql/queries';  
const { data, error, loading } = useAsyncQuery(GET_POSTS);  
const posts = computed(() => data.value?.posts || []);  
</script>

Strapi

Strapi is a powerful open-source Headless CMS that has been a trusted choice for developers for years. It is a highly reputed Headless CMS in the open-source community with over 65K stars on GitHub. Strapi shines when it comes to building complex, scalable applications. It is open-source, so you can create your application and self-host it on your infrastructure as well, giving you full control over your data and environment. Strapi supports both REST and GraphQL APIs. It offers a first-class integration experience with Nuxt.js via a dedicated Nuxt module - Nuxt Strapi

First, install the dependencies and configurations

npx nuxi@latest module add strapi

Next, add configurations in our Nuxt config file
nuxt.config.ts

export default defineNuxtConfig({  
  modules: ['@nuxtjs/strapi'],  
  strapi: {  
    {  
      url: process.env.STRAPI_URL,  
      token: process.env.STRAPI_TOKEN   
      prefix: '/api',  
      admin: '/admin',  
      version: 'v5',  
      cookie: {},  
      cookieName: 'strapi_jwt'  
    }  
  }  
})

Once this Nuxt Config is set up, we can pull data from Strapi CMS using REST or GraphQL API as shown below in our Vue components.

Rest API

<script setup lang="ts">  
import type { Post } from '~/types'  
const { find } = useStrapi()  
const posts = await find<Post>('posts')  
</script>

GraphQL API

<script setup lang="ts">  
import { GET_POSTS } from '~/graphql/queries'  
const graphql = useStrapiGraphQL();  
const posts = await graphql(GET_POSTS, {})  
</script>

More advanced usage and other configuration options can be found in the documentation here

Sanity

Sanity is a popular Headless CMS. It has an open-source tool called Sanity Studio, which helps teams work together in real time. Sanity Studio connects to a Sanity content lake, where content is stored and managed by Sanity. You can get this content using REST, GraphQL, or a JavaScript SDK. It is fully managed and has features for both developers and content creators. It is designed with a developer-first approach in mind and includes special tools like GROQ, a custom query language, and Sanity UI, a React-based library for building interfaces.

Just like Strapi, Sanity also offers a dedicated Nuxt module for integration with Nuxt.js - Nuxt Sanity. Nuxt Sanity simplifies the Nuxt - Sanity communication and also provides composables like useSanityQuery, useLazySanityQuery, which makes a developer’s life easy.

To set it up, first, we should install dependencies and add the module configuration to our Nuxt config.

npx nuxi@latest module add sanity

nuxt.config.ts

export default defineNuxtConfig({  
  modules: ['@nuxtjs/sanity'],  
  sanity: {  
    projectId: process.env.SANITY_PROJECT_ID,  
    dataset: process.env.SANITY_DATASET,  
    apiVersion: process.env.SANITY_API_VERSION,  
    useCdn: process.env.SANITY_USE_CDN,  
  },  
})

That's it, now we can use the composables inside our Vue components as shown below

<script setup lang="ts">  
const query = `*[_type == "post"]{_id, title, body}`  
const { data: posts, pending, error } = useSanityQuery(query)  
</script>

<template>  
  <div v-if="pending">Loading...</div>  
  <div v-else-if="error">Error loading content</div>  
  <ul v-else>  
    <li v-for="post in posts" :key="post._id">  
      {{ post.title }}  
    </li>  
  </ul>  
</template>

Contentful

Contentful is one of the leading players in the headless CMS space. It supports REST and GraphQL APIs and provides a JavaScript SDK, allowing content delivery across web, mobile, and IoT platforms. It's highly scalable, fully managed, and packed with features useful for different roles, such as developers and content creators. It does not have a dedicated module for Nuxt Integration but comes with a JavaScript SDK. To integrate Contentful with our Nuxt App, let us install the Contentful package

npm install contentful

Now, we can create a Nuxt plugin for Contentful that exports a Contentful client.

plugins/contentful.ts

import { createClient } from 'contentful';  
const contentfulClient = createClient({  
  space: process.env.CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID,   
  accessToken: process.env.CONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN,   
});  
export default defineNuxtPlugin((nuxtApp) => {  
  nuxtApp.provide('contentful', contentfulClient);  
});

This Nuxt plugin is now available globally and can be used inside our Vue components, as shown below

pages/contentful.vue

<script setup>  
const { $contentful } = useNuxtApp()  
const response = await $contentful.getEntries({  
  content_type: 'pageBlogPost',  
});  
console.log('Response', response);  
</script>

#Conclusion

Choosing the right CMS for your Nuxt.js project depends on your specific needs, whether it's performance, ease of use, pricing, or developer experience. Hygraph, Strapi, Sanity, and Contentful each have their own strengths and offer unique benefits. We also learned how to integrate their APIs, SDKs, and Nuxt modules to seamlessly integrate content into our Nuxt applications. With the right CMS, content teams, marketers, and developers can collaborate efficiently and have a streamlined content management workflow. Whether you're building a website, an e-commerce store, or a dynamic web application, Nuxt.js, combined with a well-integrated CMS can help you deliver high-performance and content-rich experiences.