Getting Started

Head Start is a starterkit to easily bootstrap your next web project. Here's how to get started.

Prequisites

Head Start requires Node.js to be installed. See /.nvmrc for the correct version.

Create a repository

Create a project repository using the Head Start repository template. You can use this link, or select 'Use template' on the repository page.
Clone your new repository (git clone).
Install the project dependencies (npm install).
Create a .env file (cp .env.example .env).

git clone ...
cd ...
npm install
cp .env.example .env

Set HEAD_START_PREVIEW_SECRET in your .env file to a secret value. You can think up your own value or use a passphrase generator to help you create a secret like 'wooing-uncured-backspace'.

# .env
HEAD_START_PREVIEW_SECRET=create-your-own

Before you can run your project locally, you need to set-up a DatoCMS project.

Create a DatoCMS project

Signup or signin to your DatoCMS account.
Create a new blank DatoCMS project.
In your CMS, go to Project Settings > API tokens (/project_settings/access_tokens) and copy the tokens full-access API token (DATOCMS_API_TOKEN) and read-only API token (DATOCMS_READONLY_API_TOKEN) to your .env file (see below).

# .env
DATOCMS_READONLY_API_TOKEN=copy-read-only-token
DATOCMS_API_TOKEN=copy-full-access-token

Add all models and settings in to your new CMS by running our migrations in a new environment called start using the DatoCMS CLI: npx datocms migrations:run --destination=start --fast-fork.
Promote the new start environment to primary environment: npx datocms environments:promote start Alternatively you can go to Project Settings > Environments (/project_settings/environments) and 'Promote' the start environment to primary.
In your CMS, you can now safely remove the original environment via Project Settings > Environments (/project_settings/environments).

npx datocms migrations:run --destination=start --fast-fork
npx datocms environments:promote start

Update datocms-environment to the new environment:

// datocms-environment.ts:
export const datocmsEnvironment = 'start';

[!WARNING] Head Start has an open issue on providing seed scripts. You will manually add a bit of required (placeholder) content to your new CMS instance for the global SEO data, Home and 404 Page.

You can now run your project locally:

npm run dev

Add DatoCMS secrets to repository

Head Start provides GitHub Actions which include linting code and validating HTML on PR changes. These Actions require the DatoCMS tokens to be available.

Go to your repository's Settings > Secrets and Variables > Actions > Repository Secrets (/settings/secrets/actions#repository-secrets) add DATOCMS_API_TOKEN and DATOCMS_READONLY_API_TOKEN.

Your PR's will now be able to run the pre-configured GitHub Actions.

The next step is creating a Cloudflare Pages application so your project can be deployed to the cloud.

Create a Cloudflare Pages application

Signup or login to your Cloudflare Dashboard.
Go to Workers & Pages and hit 'Create application' and select 'Pages' (/<your-cloudflare>/workers-and-pages/create/pages).
Connect to Git(Hub), select your repository and hit 'Begin setup'.
Set 'Build command' to npm run cloudflare:build.
Set 'Build output directory' to dist/.
Under 'Environment variables' add the variables from your .env file.
Hit 'Save and deploy'.

You're project is now deployed and will automatically be deployed on every git commit. To ensure changes in the CMS also redeploy the project, we need to connect DatoCMS to Cloudflare.

Connect DatoCMS to Cloudflare Pages

Go to your Cloudflare Pages application > Settings > Builds & deployments and hit 'Add deploy hook'.
Name the deploy hook "DatoCMS - Production" and set the branch to main.
Copy the deploy hook URL.
Go to your DatoCMS project > Project settings > Build triggers (/project_settings/build_triggers/) and hit 'Add new build triggers'.
Select 'Custom webook'.
Set 'build trigger name' to "Production".
Set 'Website frontend URL' to your production domain (like https://<project-name>.pages.dev/ or a custom domain).
Enable site search.
Paste the deploy hook under 'Trigger URL'.
Set 'JSON payload' to { "branch": "main" }.
Hit 'Save settings'.
Copy the build trigger ID from the page URL /project_settings/build_triggers/<id>/edit (like 30535).
Open /datocms-environment.ts and set the buildTriggerId there, to connect the search functionality to the indexed deployment.

That's it. Now deployments are automatically triggered from both git and when editors hit 'Build now' in the CMS. If you add additional build triggers in the future, you can repeat those steps. Note that buildTriggerId in /datocms-environment.ts should always be set to the production build trigger.

What's next?

Read the docs for more details on the setup Head Start provides.