Reviewed Kirby-Snipcart integration. Feedback?

Kirby 2 Questions 🤔
1

Hi guys,

We just gave our Kirby-Snipcart integration post a much-needed polish. Since we published the 1st version (2015), Kirby just kept popping up on our radar (through support, email questions, new live sites, agencies around us using it, etc.). So we really wanted to improve our original post.

Going “Flat File”: Kirby CMS Tutorial & E-Commerce on a Lean PHP CMS

Do you guys think that integration makes sense?

And if so, would any of you be interested in maybe collaborating on a plugin with us?

We’re still a small bootstrapped team, but we’re trying to see how we can better serve the Kirby community.

Cheers!

PS: We’ve included a lengthy intro section about flat file CMS to show to some of our users/audience when to “go flat”. You might want to skip that part.

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2

Thanks for writing/updating that tutorial, it’s really great!

Just a bit of feedback:

  • In flat-file systems, content isn’t more template-coupled than in database CMS. Actually Kirby content is less template-coupled than for example WordPress content because Kirby makes it easy to store structured data in the separate fields. You can also output content in different formats.
  • In the product.php template, you use the URL ./../../. Instead of using relative links, you can make Kirby generate a URL: To link to the homepage you can use <?= url() ?>, to link to any page you can use <?= url('products') ?>.

Apart from that, the tutorial is pretty straight-forward and easy to follow. Good work!

Regarding the plugin: I think it’s already pretty simple without one. What the plugin could do is to automate embedding the assets in the footer, but I think it makes sense to keep the control over this at the site devs (for example the site may already use jQuery).

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3

I really appreciate the feedback!

Been discussing that content coupling point with our lead dev and you’re totally right–removing that disadvantage right now.

I’ve also shared the suggested modification for our relative links with Maxime, who crafted the tutorial, so we can update it soon.

As for the plugin, I understand it might seem overkill for the simple use case in the blog post. But we were thinking it might make sense for more advanced use cases with features such as product custom fields. Could reduce development overhead a bit?

4

I see your point. :slight_smile:
Some common features could be integrated into a plugin, but the plugin would again need to be integrated into the site anyway. Kirby sites are often custom-built and it isn’t that easy to make “one size fits all” plugins for Kirby like in WordPress (although I think that many WordPress plugin devs choose the easy way and that their plugins aren’t that “one size fits all” in the end).
Since I don’t have much experience with shop systems, I personally don’t know the needs of shop devs. But of course we’d welcome if someone made a Kirby Snipcart plugin.

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