Headless CMS: An Efficient Way of Content Management

Have you ever wondered how huge companies manage their websites that contain a lot of webpages, with each web page having its different content and design? 

Well, the CMS (Content Management System) is a repository that manages the content over the web.

CMS is a place where the authors write content and publish it over the web pages. Usually, “Traditional CMS” provides you with the repository and the pre-designed webpage. But the major drawback of Traditional CMS is that it publishes the content only over the pre-designed webpages (hosted by Traditional CMS). Trying to publish content on a customized webpage or a self-hosted webpage is not possible with Traditional CMS. To overcome this drawback, a different CMS is worth getting, i.e. “Headless CMS.”

What is Headless CMS?

Headless CMS is a back-end only repository for content management. It makes the content accessible via the Restful API to display content on any website/app. For more understanding of Headless CMS, let’s learn what the term “headless” means.

The term ”Headless” refers to chopping the head (front-end) off the body (back-end). In simple words, “headless” means separating the front-end and the back-end. 

Front-end is the visual part of any application where a user views the content. The back-end refers to a part of the application used to store and manipulate data. In terms of CMS, the back-end handles and manages the content. 

In Headless CMS, the front-end is independent of the back-end.

With Headless CMS, you have the authority to decide where and how to display content. Rather than depending on some pre-built design of a webpage, you can design your webpage and make use of RESTful API calls to fetch and display content over it.

General flow while developing websites and integrating it with Headless CMS

 

Here is the flow for a better understanding of how to work with Headless CMS:

Step 1:- Design a webpage using any programming language of your choice and mention elements (for example, title and body) to populate content.

Step 2:- Create content in the repository.

Step 3:-  Make a RESTful API call. This will return the JSON object of the content.

Step 4:- Fetch content from the JSON output and display it in the elements of the webpage.

Why choose Headless CMS over Traditional CMS?

In Traditional CMS, there is restriction over the choice of the website template. But in Headless CMS, you can code the template of your choice. 

In Traditional CMS, when you publish content, you can view it on a single channel. A channel refers to a website or a mobile app where you can view the content. You can’t publish a single content over many channels. Hence, Traditional CMS lacks scalability. 

Whereas in Headless CMS, you can access the content via RESTful API and display a single content on many channels. 

Headless CMS also provides SDK support for Android, iOS, JavaScript, Ruby, and many more platforms. With SDKs, the developer uses the repository’s credentials (key, content ID, etc.) to fetch and display content. 

Looking into the future, Headless CMS will be the leader in the CMS market to display content on IOT-enabled devices.

Benefits of Headless CMS

• Develop UI of your choice: Code the front-end using any programming language of your choice and display content wherever you want. 

• The Back-end is independent of the front-end: Decide which values to fetch from content to display on the front-end. It is not a compulsion to fetch and display all the values of a single content from the back-end. You can fetch only the required values to show on your website/app.

• Easy management of content: You can decide which content from the repository to publish over the web and which content to publish on a mobile app. 

• Publish a single content over multiple channels: In Headless CMS, you can publish a single content over mobile app and on a webpage. 

• Better control over the published content: For example, you publish content over both, mobile app and the website. Now if you want to update the content published only on the website, then it is possible with Headless CMS. Update the content and publish it to the website. The website will show the updated content. The content on the mobile app stays unaffected, and it will still display the original content. 

• Improved scalability:  "Write Once, Publish Everywhere." Content created in Headless CMS is accessible via RESTful API. With this API, you can fetch a single content and display it on many websites, mobile apps, and even on VR devices.

• SDK support: If you don‘t wish to go for RESTful API, the Headless CMS has SDK support for platforms such as Android, iOS, JavaScript, NodeJS, and many more. Enter the repository’s credentials (key, content ID, etc.) and access the content. 

 

Best Headless CMS

The following are some examples of Headless CMS that one should consider:

Contentstack

Contentful

Kentico Cloud

Prismic

Butter CMS
Quintype 

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This summarized the Headless CMS. If you like this post, then don’t forget to share such a useful article on Headless CMS.

For any queries or suggestions, drop it in the comment section below.