2025-06-12

Statamic

Statamic is a Laravel-based CMS built by the team at Statamic, LLC, in the USA.

Project setup

Set up a project locally

Since Statamic doesn’t have a database, it’s less complicated than Craft to get going.

  1. Clone the repo from GitHub.
  2. Start DDEV.
  3. Create a .env file and copy the content from 1Password.

The Control Panel

The admin is called the Control Panel (CP) in Statamic and can be reached via https://statamic.test/cp/

Templates

Statamic uses its own templating engine called Antlers. Probably named after the fact that the {{ used as delimiter looks like antlers.

Antlers used to be more like the template language used in ExpressionEngine back in the day, but has matured considerably lately and includes both variables and logic today, just like Twig.

Fields

Just like in Craft, you can create your Fields in the CP.

But, since no databases are involved, you can copy the text files with the config left and right if you like. These are located in /resources/fieldsets/.

A collection of fields can be saved as a Fieldset.

Everything is saved in YAML-format and looks something like this:

title: Header
fields:
  -
    handle: headerbox_bg
    field:
      options:
        color: 'Enfärgad bakgrund'
        image: Bild
        video: Video
      multiple: false
      max_items: 1
      clearable: false
      searchable: true
      taggable: false
      push_tags: false
      cast_booleans: false
      display: 'Bakgrund för headerbox'
      type: select
      icon: select
      listable: hidden
  ...

YAML is based on indentation, so it’s very important that the data is indented in the right way.

Statamic has many built-in Fieldtypes:

  • Array | Manage data in a key:value array format.
  • Assets | Upload files and use the Asset Browser to pick from existing files in your Asset Containers.
  • Bard | Rich article writing and block-based layouts made easy.
  • Button Group | Buttons you click. You can only choose one.
  • Checkboxes | Boxes you check. You can check 'em all.
  • Code | Write code and see it highlight. But will you choose spaces or tabs?
  • Color | Pick colors, enter hex or HSLA values, and other colorful things.
  • Date | Helps you pick a date, but not get one.
  • Entries | Create relationships with other entries.
  • Hidden | Set default data when creating new entries.
  • Integer | For when all you want is numbers.
  • List | Manage simple lists with the help of a keyboard-friendly interface.
  • Markdown | Our beautiful Markdown editor with preview, assets integration, and more.
  • Radio | Circles you click. You can only choose one.
  • Range | Choose a number between a min and max value.
  • Revealer | A button that reveals conditional fields like magic.
  • Section | A visual header to help break up and organize long publish forms.
  • Select | Choose from predefined options. This field is highly configurable.
  • Table | Create and manage simple tables of limitless columns and rows.
  • Tags | Enter a list of items with a tag-style interface.
  • Template | A template picker with autosuggest.
  • Terms | Attach Taxonomy Terms to your content.
  • Text | A simple text input field for managing short, unformatted text.
  • Textarea | A simple textarea field for managing longer, unformatted text.
  • Time | A timepicker. It lets you pick a time.
  • Toggle | A toggle switch for booleans (true and false).
  • Users | Relate users with your content.
  • Video | Extract embed URLs from Youtube, Vimeo, and HTML5 compatible video links and preview them right inline.
  • YAML | A YAML editor that directly manages YAML.

Content

How to save the data is defined by Collections. They are similar to Sections in Craft. Examples of Collections can be Pages, Products, Persons, etc.

All data is also saved in YAML-files located in /content/.

The different types of content include:

Blueprints – connects fields and content

To decide which fields should be visible for which collection or asset, Statamic uses Blueprints. This is where you decide which fields (or fieldsets) should be visible for each type of content.

Addons

There are many addons to Statamic, but as with Craft CMS, we try to use as few as possible as a general rule.

Here is a collection of the ones we have used and the ones we’ve been looking at.

Articles

Editor plugins

Make the editor your best friend, you’ll be hanging out together for quite some time.

Starter kits

We have not used these, but there is a way to get a flying start with what’s called Starter kits. These are close to themes in other CMSes and often based around a specific use case such as a blog, a small company website, etc.