Building with a Headless CMS

Have you considered using a headless or decoupled CMS? Most websites are build using a traditional CMS. A traditional CMS gives you a way to store data, a UI to input the data and ways to display the data. You may have used a traditional CMS like Drupal or WordPress to build your website.

Building With A Headless CMS

What is a headless or decoupled CMS? The front end and content management system are separate from each other. Headless and Decoupled as similar but they are not the same. A Headless CMS manages the content and waits for the front end to do something with the content. With a Decoupled CMS, it prepares the content for delivery and figures out how it will present your content to a specific device or environment.

Why use a Headless CMS?

  • You are building a website or app that uses a framework like Angular JS, React or VueJS
  • You want to build a website with a Static Site Generator like Jekyll or Gatsby
  • You are creating a mobile app
  • You are creating content for use in different places

Where can I find a headless CMS for my next project? Headless CMS maintains a list of JAMStack content management systems. Or you can experiment with a static site generator.

What if you want to update your existing CMS to use as headless CMS?

If you are using WordPress, you have the option of using it as a headless CMS. You can use WordPress to store the content and display it using an API.

You are not required to use PHP you can use whatever language you want. JC Hiatt explains how to use react to create a headless WordPress site.

If you don’t want to update WordPress, you can use Cosmic JS. It lets you build your next modern web app with any programming language that you want.

When to use a headless CMS?

It depends on your needs and project. You may want to use a traditional CMS when you don’t have a development team and need a website that is easy to maintain. Use a headless or decoupled CMS when you have a development team and you want to create a custom interface for use with more than a website.