Beginners Guide | Luca Nerlich - Tech Documentation

📄️ Introduction

What a headless CMS is, why Strapi, installing Strapi 5, understanding the project structure, and your first look at the admin panel.

Defining collection types, single types, field types, components, and dynamic zones in Strapi 5.

Defining one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relations between content types to build a blog data model.

Using the admin panel to create, edit, and publish content -- drafts, publishing workflow, media library, and bulk operations.

Strapi's auto-generated REST API -- endpoints, filtering, sorting, pagination, field selection, population, and testing with curl.

The Users & Permissions plugin, JWT authentication, user registration, roles, API tokens, and controlling access to your Strapi API.

Extending Strapi's default CRUD controllers, creating custom actions, delegating business logic to services, and sanitizing output.

Custom routes for new endpoints, access control policies, request/response middleware, and the Strapi request lifecycle.

Reacting to content events with Document Service middleware, configuring webhooks, and integrating with external services.

Upload providers, S3 and Cloudinary integration, image optimization, responsive formats, upload validation, and media management.

Setting up TypeScript in Strapi 5, generating types from content schemas, typing controllers, services, and Document Service queries.

Environment-based configuration, PostgreSQL setup, deploying Strapi to a VPS with PM2, nginx reverse proxy, HTTPS, and security hardening.

Unit testing services and controllers, integration testing API endpoints, and end-to-end testing strategies for Strapi 5.

Containerizing Strapi with Docker, docker-compose for development, and setting up automated deployments with GitHub Actions.

Database indexing, query optimization, caching strategies, CDN setup, and monitoring for high-performance Strapi applications.

Common Strapi issues and solutions, debugging techniques, and a complete guide for migrating from Strapi 4 to Strapi 5.

Six hands-on project ideas -- from beginner to advanced -- to reinforce everything you learned in the Strapi 5 Beginners Guide.