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Backstage Basics

Backstage Features

Backstage is an open-source Internal Developer Portal (IDP) built on familiar technologies—React for the frontend and Node.js/Express for the backend. By leveraging a plugin-based architecture, Backstage lets you customize and scale your developer experience using widely adopted tools.

Below are the core benefits you get out of the box:

The image illustrates the benefits of Backstage, highlighting its open-source nature, high customizability, and use of React as a frontend library and Node.js as a backend library.

  • Open Source: Community-driven platform with frequent updates.
  • Customizable: Extend with plugins or build your own.
  • Familiar Stack: React UI + Node/Express backend.
  • Scalable: Designed to handle catalogs of thousands of services.
  • Secure: Integrations with SSO, RBAC, and audit logging.

Software Catalog

The Software Catalog offers a single pane of glass for every service, component, package, and application in your organization. It tracks ownership, lifecycle, metadata, and relationships—all automatically.

The image shows a software catalog interface with a list of services, including details like name, owner, lifecycle, and description. It features options for creating components and support, with a sidebar for navigation.

When you select a component, you see its detail page:

The image shows a software catalog interface for "example-website," featuring an overview section with details about the website and a relations diagram illustrating connections with other components.

FieldDescription
NameUnique identifier of the component
OwnerUser or team responsible for maintenance
LifecycleStage (e.g., production, staging, deprecated)
DescriptionFree-form summary of the purpose and functionality
RelationsVisual graph of dependencies and interactions

Note

The built-in relations graph requires no extra configuration—you immediately see how services connect.

Templates

Backstage templates automate project scaffolding, enforcing organizational best practices. This dramatically cuts setup time and reduces configuration drift.

The image is a flowchart titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates," showing a sequence of steps for setting up software, including creating a GitHub repo, setting up tooling, provisioning a Kubernetes cluster, and deploying an application.

Why Use Templates?

BenefitImpact
Consistent StructureAll projects share the same folder layout
Pre-configured ToolingLinting, testing, and CI/CD ready to go
Error ReductionFewer manual steps means fewer mistakes
Faster OnboardingDevelopers start coding on day one
Custom Stack SupportTemplates for Java, Node.js, Python, and more

The image is a presentation slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates," highlighting the benefits of standardization in project scaffolding, such as maintaining consistency, simplifying onboarding, and facilitating smoother transitions. A wavy blue line with a circular endpoint is on the right side.

Warning

Modifying templates directly in production can cause drift—always version-control your template definitions.

The image is a presentation slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates," highlighting automation benefits such as automating repetitive tasks and reducing errors. It features a wavy blue line with a pink circle and text about scaffolding new projects.

Organizations can ship templates for any stack:

The image lists "Out-of-the-Box Features – Templates" with options for Node.js, Java, Node.js API with API Gateway, Python, and React, each accompanied by their respective icons.

Template Workflow Example

  1. Select your template (e.g., Python service).
  2. Provide project metadata (name, owner, repo ID).
  3. Pick deployment target (EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda).
  4. Review defaults and submit.

Backstage will:

  • Create a GitHub repository with your organization’s naming conventions.
  • Generate starter code, config files, and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Provision cloud resources and deploy the initial release.

The image illustrates a process where a new repository is created on GitHub, connected to an AWS EC2 instance, and then used to deploy an application.

Documentation

Integrated docs keep your documentation close to the code. Backstage uses MkDocs to render Markdown on demand, right within the portal.

The image shows a software interface for a "shopping-cart" service, featuring tabs like Overview, CI/CD, API, Dependencies, and Docs, with sections for About and Relations. It includes details such as description, owner, system, type, and tags.

Typical Markdown file structure:

my-service/
├── docs/
│   ├── index.md
│   ├── api.md
│   └── architecture.md
├── src/
│   ├── index.js
│   └── handlers.js
├── .gitignore
└── mkdocs.yml

// Sample code snippet in docs
function greet(name) {
  return `Hello, ${name}!`;
}

console.log(greet('Backstage'));

The image shows a file directory structure with folders and files like `index.md`, `index.js`, `.gitignore`, and `package.json`, under the title "Out-of-the-Box Features – Docs."

Backstage’s universal search indexes your catalog, docs, and even external sources like Confluence or Stack Exchange. Developers find everything from API docs to team wikis in one place.

Plugins

Every feature in Backstage is a plugin—catalog, templates, docs, search—all are modular and interchangeable. You can install community plugins or develop your own.

The image is a slide titled "Out-of-the-Box Features – Plugins," describing how plugins can customize the behavior of backstage, display UI elements, and integrate third-party services. It includes icons of a wrench and gears.

Plugin CategoryDescriptionExample Usage
AnalyticsCollect usage metrics and telemetry@backstage/plugin-analytics
MonitoringDisplay service health and alerts@backstage/plugin-kubernetes
CI/CDIntegrate build and deploy pipelines@backstage/plugin-circleci
Issue TrackingLink tickets and bug reports@backstage/plugin-jira
Custom UIAdd bespoke components or visualizationsYour organization’s custom plugin

The image displays a grid of plugin features for a software platform, each with a brief description and an "Explore" button. The plugins cover various functionalities such as analytics, reporting, and monitoring.

Note

Because the core catalog, docs, and search are all plugins, you can replace or extend any part of Backstage without touching the main codebase.

Summary

Backstage is the open-source framework for building modern Internal Developer Portals. With a plugin-centric design on top of React and Node.js, you get:

  • A centralized Software Catalog
  • Reusable Templates for consistent scaffolding
  • Inline Documentation powered by MkDocs
  • Universal Search across your knowledge base
  • An extensible Plugin Ecosystem

The image is a summary slide describing Backstage, highlighting it as an open-source framework for creating IDPs, using libraries like React.js and Node.js, with features like a software catalog and plugins for extensibility.

  • Backstage homepage: https://backstage.io/
  • React: https://reactjs.org
  • Node.js: https://nodejs.org
  • Express: https://expressjs.com
  • MkDocs: https://www.mkdocs.org
  • Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
  • Stack Exchange: https://stackexchange.com

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