With over 40,000 stars on GitHub, 700 active contributors, and more than 5 million downloads to date, Strapi claims to be the fastest-growing open source headless CMS
Last week, just as Strapi V4 hit the digital streets, I got to speak exclusively with Pierre Burgy, Co-founder and CEO of Strapi, on his outlook for the platform.
What's New: Plugin-powered Extendability
Strapi V4 boasts a long list of improvements:
- Improved navigation and accessibility of the admin panel to make users more efficient.
- A new programmatic plugin API and an inclusive Design System optimized for accessibility, enabling plugin building and maintenance.
- Faster migration and upgrades between different Strapi versions.
- A more flexible database query engine gives full control to plugin and application developers.
- The REST and GraphQL API is now simpler, more powerful, and customizable.
- Developers can now manage the access of the Content API through API Tokens administered from the admin panel to easily authenticate REST and GraphQL queries.
- Developers can now quickly spot and fix errors in applications with standardized error codes and context.
Strapi's new plugin API, presented alongside the new Strapi Design System, caught my eye.
"With this new plugin API and Design System, we are doubling down on making Strapi the most flexible headless CMS on the Market," Pierre Burgy explained.
“On top of that, the new Query Engine and several other API changes considerably boost both the REST and graphQL API performance," he continued.
Put simply, Strapi is hoping to inspire an army of Strapi plugin developers to grow their ecosystem of integrations. Their design system is perhaps just as vital as the API, offering would-be plugin developers guidelines to guard against sloppy or unsecured code.
"The new UI and Design System is focused on accessibility, allowing developers to customize the admin panel with a consistent look and feel through plugins or injection zones," Burgey said.
What's Next: Community-driven Composablilty
When I asked if the openness to plugins was a move towards composability, Burgy replied that his goal was "definitely to make Strapi the most flexible and customizable headless CMS on the market."
"Being open-source and self-hosted already gave us an edge, but v4 allows us to take that "composable approach" to a whole new level," he said.
To keep that composability in check, Strapi is planning to launch its own marketplace with plugins as well as starters.
The plugins will either be built by Strapi or developed by Strapi's community members with Strapi's supervision. Everything will be free to begin with, but Strapi's announcement of the marketplace included a nod towards monetization, as they want to ensure that "plugin creators are rewarded for their hard work."
