Create a Volto project without a backend

This document shows how to create a Volto project with the frontend only when you have your own existing backend, such as Plone Classic UI, Nick, or Guillotina.

See also

To create a full Plone project with both frontend and backend, see Create a project with Volto (stable release) instead.

To contribute to Volto, see Develop Volto core.

For using Volto for a project—in other words, use Volto as a library—you should use Volto's project generator @plone/generator-volto. It's a boilerplate project generator based on Yeoman that will provide you with the basic files and folder structure to bootstrap a Volto site. In addition to bootstrapping stand-alone Volto projects, it can also bootstrap Volto add-ons.

1. Open a terminal and execute:

   npm install -g yo @plone/generator-volto
   # Install the latest and stable release of Volto with the following command
   yo @plone/volto
   # or you can install the "canary" release, including any alpha release
   yo @plone/volto --canary
   # or you can install any specific released version
   yo @plone/volto --volto=15.0.0
   # you can even pass a GitHub repo and specific branch
   yo @plone/volto --volto=plone/volto#16.0.0
   # you can bootstrap with add-ons
   yo @plone/volto --addon=volto-form-block
   

2. Answer the questions when prompted, and provide the name of the new app (folder) to be created. For the sake of this documentation, use myvoltoproject as the project name.

   Note

   You can run the generator with parameters to tailor your requirements.

   yo @plone/volto --help
   

   See also

   @plone/generator-volto README.md.

3. Change your working directory to the newly created folder myvoltoproject (or whatever name you entered).

   cd myvoltoproject
   

4. @plone/generator-volto installed the dependencies for you. Start the project.

   yarn start
   

   This starts the development server, which compiles the project code, and when done, it serves the app at http://localhost:3000.