A Rails blog engine like no other

Meet the Rails blog engine that integrates with your website using a straightforward API. Smooth, simple, and tasty content integration — that’s Butter.

Posted on November 28, 2023

Intuitive admin interface

So easy to use. So easy to customize. You’re going to love the blog you build with ButterCMS.

Handy integration with Rails

Our Rails blog engine has a simple content API and drop-in SDKs that make the magic happen in minutes, not hours.

A truly zero-maintenance solution

With ButterCMS, you’ll never worry about security upgrades, hosting, or performance again.

You've got better things to do than build another blog

Drop our Rails blog engine into your app, and get back to more interesting problems.

ButterCMS is an API-based blog engine that integrates seamlessly with new and existing Rails apps. It's great for SEO, and provides a clean and modern user interface that your marketing team will love. You can deploy ButterCMS in minutes using our Rails API client.

That leaves plenty of time for you and your marketing team to do what you do best: create killer apps with killer content.

Play video

See how Butter’s API enables you to launch a flexible blog with amazing SEO using your existing tech stack.

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Best blog engine on the market

headshot of Hampton Catl

After shopping the market, it was clear that ButterCMS was the perfect choice. It allows our developers to build powerful components and makes it easy for our marketing team to drive a better customer experience. Hampton Catlin Creator of Sass and Haml

Deploy our Rails Starter in 30 seconds

Or follow the below commands to clone a copy of the repo from github, install dependencies, set your free Butter token, and run your local server on localhost:3000/.

# requires ruby 3.1.0
$ git clone https://github.com/ButterCMS/rails-starter-buttercms.git
$ cd rails-starter-buttercms
$ bundle install
$ echo 'RAILS_BUTTER_CMS_API_KEY=' >> .env
$ bundle exec rails s

Built to make content marketing easy

ButterCMS is the best Rails blog engine for a simple reason: Rails developers can build solutions that marketing people love. Our API allows your content gurus to quickly spin up high-converting blog templates, sidebars, related content features, and more, all using simple drag-and-drop functionality.

  • Use main domain (improves SEO)
  • Friendly admin interface
  • Upload images, video, and other media
  • Edit URL slugs and meta tags
  • Tags and categories
  • Author profiles
  • RSS/Atom feeds
  • Search
  • Webhooks
  • And more...

The simplest Rails blog engine you'll find

Our simple setup saves you time and money. Take us for a spin to see for yourself!

headshot of LUKE GARDNER

It's the epitome of plug-and-play simplicity for content creators. It does exactly what I need it to. LUKE GARDNER, CONTENT SPECIALIST, PRINTAVO

Fast integration with any Rails app

Our mission was to make it easy to integrate Butter with your existing Rails app in minutes. It’s so simple! To demonstrate, here’s a mini tutorial to give you a feel for the process of adding Butter to your Rails app.

Of course, you can also use our Pages and Collections to do advanced content modeling. For a full integration guide, check out our Official Guide for the ButterCMS Rails API client.

Play video

See how easily you can integrate the ButterCMS Pages API with your Rails app.

Seamless Rails components

Empower your marketing team to create a customized blog engine that aligns perfectly with your Rails components. 

Components are the essential building blocks of any Rails app, and ButterCMS handles them with ease. 

Our drag and drop interface makes it simple to structure your content to match existing Rails components and to create new reusable components whenever you need them.

The best Rails blog engine for SEO

ButterCMS gives you absolute control over on-page SEO ranking factors. Key SEO variables are built into our default post template, giving your marketing team direct access to configure all of these settings, and more.

  • Page title
  • Post tags and categories
  • META description
  • URL slug
  • Featured image / Open Graph image
  • Image ALT tags
  • Link anchor text

ButterCMS saves you development time

Most customers get our Rails blog engine up and running in less than an hour. Try it yourself!

headshot of DILLON BURNS

Simple as can be, with powerful features and great customer support. DILLON BURNS, FRONT END DEVELOPER, KEYME

How to integrate ButterCMS into your Rails application

Integrating the Butter blog engine into your Rails app is dead simple. Here's a mini tutorial to get a feel for setting up your blog home and blog post pages. 

For a full integration guide, check out our Official Rails Guide

The Butter Rails gem includes a generator that scaffolds a blog in a single command. Run it using the following command:

rails generate butter:install_blog

The generator creates an initializer file, controllers, and views:

|-- app
  |-- controllers
      |-- buttercms
          |-- authors_controller.rb
          |-- base_controller.rb
          |-- categories_controller.rb
          |-- feeds_controller.rb
          |-- posts_controller.rb
  |-- views
      |-- buttercms
          |-- authors
              |-- show.html.erb
          |-- categories
              |-- show.html.erb
          |-- posts
              |-- _post.html.erb
              |-- index.html.erb
              |-- show.html.erb
      |-- layouts
          |-- buttercms
              |-- default.html.erb

|-- config
  |-- initializers
      |-- buttercms.rb

It also adds routes to your routes.rb file:

scope :module => 'buttercms' do
get '/categories/:slug' => 'categories#show', :as => :buttercms_category
get '/author/:slug' => 'authors#show', :as => :buttercms_author

get '/blog/rss' => 'feeds#rss', :format => 'rss', :as => :buttercms_blog_rss
get '/blog/atom' => 'feeds#atom', :format => 'atom', :as => :buttercms_blog_atom
get '/blog/sitemap.xml' => 'feeds#sitemap', :format => 'xml', :as => :buttercms_blog_sitemap

get '/blog(/page/:page)' => 'posts#index', :defaults => {:page => 1}, :as => :buttercms_blog
get '/blog/:slug' => 'posts#show', :as => :buttercms_post
end

After running the generator, set your API token in the initializer and restart your server to view your blog. Your blog includes an index page, post page, category page, and author page as well as RSS, Atom, and sitemap XML feeds.

That's it! The blog posts created in your Butter dashboard will immediately show up in your app.

Get Started for Free

Try Butter free for 14 days

See for yourself what makes Butter the best Rails blog engine out there. Click the button below to sign up for your free 14-day trial.