Triangle CMS (Delta)

Foreword

Triangle CMS (Delta) is the Drexel Triangle's solution for a minimal WordPress replacement. Its core is a headless CMS (Content Management System) that serves and edits content from a local database. WordPress content can be migrated into Delta via the wordpress-etl tool. Delta also offers a minimal frontend similar to WordPress, and because the core CMS is headless, users are welcome to build their own. Delta also includes built-in logging, accessible through a Grafana dashboard, to enable easy monitoring of API calls and internal errors.

Developer Guide

Project Structure

Triangle CMS is split into:

• server/: Go backend
• frontend/: React frontend
• observability/: Loki + Promtail + Grafana config for logging purposes
• scripts/: setup scripts

API Specification and Data Models

API specification and response/data model documentation live in the project wiki:

• https://github.com/DrexelTriangle/triangle-cms/wiki
  • Endpoints: https://github.com/DrexelTriangle/triangle-cms/wiki/Endpoints
  • Response shapes/models: https://github.com/DrexelTriangle/triangle-cms/wiki/Response-Shapes

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose
• Go 1.24+
• Node.js 20+ and npm
• Local clone of wordpress-etl: https://github.com/DrexelTriangle/wordpress-etl

Quick Start

1. Run the WordPress ETL pipeline locally in wordpress-etl to generate source SQL files.
2. From triangle-cms repo root, generate CMS SQL files:

./scripts/generate_wordpress_sql.sh

By default, the script auto-detects ETL SQL if the wordpress-etl repository is in the same directory or the parent directory of triangle-cms:

• ../wordpress-etl/logs/sql
• ./wordpress-etl/logs/sql

3. Start only MariaDB in Docker (recommended for local backend development):

docker compose up -d mariadb

This starts:

• MariaDB (mariadb) on localhost:${MARIADB_PORT_FORWARD:-3306} (container port 3306), populated from the ETL pipeline output

If you want the full Docker stack (CMS + observability), run:

./scripts/setup-containers.sh

This starts:

• MariaDB (mariadb) on localhost:${MARIADB_PORT_FORWARD:-3306} (container port 3306), populated from the ETL pipeline output
• CMS backend (cms) on https://localhost:8080 which exposes the API
• Promtail (promtail) which collects logs from Docker containers
• Loki (loki) on port 3100, which indexes logs from Promtail
• Grafana (http://localhost:3000, default User:admin, Password:admin) which allows you to explore and query logs from Loki

Important:

• Logging/observability (Promtail, Loki, Grafana) is only available when running the full Docker stack.
• If you run the backend locally via go run (instead of the cms Docker container), those Docker logging pipelines do not apply to your local process.

Reset all compose volumes and rebuild:

Warning

Running this command will erase all logs and database entries, equivalent to a fresh install

./scripts/setup-containers.sh --reset-data

Local Development

Backend (Go API)

1. Ensure MariaDB is running (via Docker or local instance).
2. If using Docker MariaDB and running the backend via go run, configure server/.env with the same values used by your compose MARIADB_DATABASE, MARIADB_USER, and MARIADB_PASSWORD:

DB_NAME=triangle
DB_USER=triangle_user
DB_PASSWORD=triangle_password
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306

If using a separate local MariaDB instance, configure server/.env for that instance instead.

3. If the Docker cms service is running, stop it first to avoid port conflict on :8080:

docker compose stop cms

4. Run backend:

cd server
go run ./main.go

The backend serves HTTPS on https://localhost:8080 using (the certs are just there to keep Postman happy):

• server/certs/localhost.crt
• server/certs/localhost.key

Apply Backend Changes to Docker CMS

When you change Go backend code under server/ and want those changes reflected in the Docker cms container, rebuild and restart that service image:

docker compose up -d --build cms

If your change is to MariaDB bootstrap SQL files in server/internal/database/wordpress_etl/, those are only applied on fresh DB initialization. Recreate volumes for those to take effect:

Warning

Running this command will erase all logs and database entries, equivalent to a fresh install

./scripts/setup-containers.sh --reset-data

Frontend (Vite)

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Vite dev server starts on http://localhost:5173.

WordPress SQL ETL Flow

SQL files for bootstrap imports live in:

• server/internal/database/wordpress_etl/

Before running this step, you must have already run the ETL pipeline in:

• https://github.com/DrexelTriangle/wordpress-etl

Generate CMS SQL files from the ETL pipeline output:

./scripts/generate_wordpress_sql.sh [source_sql_dir] [output_dir]

Defaults:

• source: auto-detected (../wordpress-etl, ../wordpress-etl/logs/sql, ./wordpress-etl, ./wordpress-etl/logs/sql)
• output: default (server/internal/database/wordpress_etl)

Overrides:

• Pass explicit args: ./scripts/generate_wordpress_sql.sh ../wordpress-etl/logs/sql server/internal/database/wordpress_etl
• Or use env vars: WP_ETL_SQL_DIR=../wordpress-etl ./scripts/generate_wordpress_sql.sh WP_ETL_OUT_DIR=server/internal/database/wordpress_etl ./scripts/generate_wordpress_sql.sh WP_ETL_SQL_DIR=../wordpress-etl WP_ETL_OUT_DIR=server/internal/database/wordpress_etl ./scripts/generate_wordpress_sql.sh

Generated files:

• 01-authors.sql
• 02-articles.sql
• 03-articles-authors.sql
• 04-seo.sql

These are mounted into MariaDB init at container startup through docker-compose.yml.

Testing

Backend tests:

cd server
go test ./...

Test coverage:

Run to see the percentage of code each test covers

cd server
go test -coverprofile=cover.out ./...

This also generates the cover.out file, showing exactly which lines are run during tests.