Run Netlify CMS Admin Locally

Let’s cover how to run the Netlify CMS on your local machine. This write-up assumes you’ve already Netlify CMS in your project. After setup, you should have an admin folder containing an index.html and config.yml file. If not, go ahead and add those. See the documentation for more info.

The config.yml file is used to set up the fields and properties needed for the dashboard.

The /admin route is the public path that allows access to the dashboard on your website, but it can only be accessed when the site is live.

Here’s an example of the folder structure:

/admin
   config.yml
   index.html

To access the Netlify CMS admin on your local machine, follow these steps:

1. Add local_backend: true in the config.yml file in the admin folder.
2. Run npx netlify-cms-proxy-server from the root directory of your repository. The proxy server will run on a different port, typically port 8081.
3. Now, go to whatever route is running your website locally and go to /admin. So, if your app runs on port 3000 for example, you can access your admin at localhost:3000/admin

Happy blogging!