Gatsby Simple Contentful Starter

Gatsby Simple Contentful Starter is a minimal Gatsby starter that connects a Gatsby site to a Contentful content model named homePage and is designed to deploy to Netlify.

What is Gatsby Simple Contentful Starter?

Gatsby Simple Contentful Starter is a starter template for the Gatsby static site generator that fetches content from a Contentful account. It requires a Contentful space and an access token, which you supply in environment variables, and it expects a content model called homePage to exist in that space. The starter outputs a statically generated website that can be built locally with gatsby develop and deployed to Netlify. It was created by Connor Wilson and includes a live demo hosted on Netlify.

What makes it stand out?

• Direct Contentful integration — The starter connects to your Contentful account using credentials stored in a .env file, following the instructions in sample.env.
• Single content model — It is built around a Contentful model named homePage, so you can focus on one page of content rather than a complex setup.
• Netlify deployment flow — The README explains how to push your repository to Git, import it on Netlify, and configure the Contentful environment variables for production.
• Live demo — A working demo is available at the Netlify URL, showing what the starter produces.
• Standard Gatsby tooling — Uses npm i to install dependencies and gatsby develop for local development, which matches the default Gatsby workflow.
• Supplementary tutorial — Links to a Medium article that details how to create a Gatsby starter with Contentful and deploy to Netlify.

Who should use it?

• Developers learning JAMstack — Use this starter to see how Gatsby, Contentful, and Netlify fit together in a minimal project.
• Developers prototyping a homepage — Because the starter reads a single homePage model, it is a quick starting point for a one-page site backed by content from Contentful.
• Content creators — Manage the homepage content in Contentful while the site rebuilds as a static page; no need to touch code for text or media updates.

What can you do with it?

• Create a new Gatsby site — Run gatsby new my-fun-site with the starter's repository URL to scaffold a project that talks to Contentful.
• Deploy to Netlify — After pushing the project to a Git repository, create a new site on Netlify and add your Contentful credentials as environment variables to enable production builds.
• Configure Contentful — Rename sample.env to .env and fill in your Contentful space details so the starter can query the homePage content model.

FAQ

What Contentful model does this starter expect?

The starter is configured to read from a Contentful content model named homePage. You need to create this model in your Contentful space and populate it with content before the site will have data to display.

How do I deploy this starter to Netlify?

Push your project to a Git repository, import the repository on Netlify, and add your Contentful credentials as environment variables. The README also links to a Medium article that walks through the full process.

Do I need to manually configure anything after cloning?

Yes. Rename the sample.env file to .env in the project root and fill in your Contentful details. Then run npm i to install dependencies and gatsby develop to start the development server.