With the prevalence of connected devices or IoT, we have seen a spectacular rise of Headless CMS in the marketplace. “Globally, the CMS market was valued at around $36 billion in 2018 and is expected to generate around $123.5 billion by 2026”. Source: Contentstack. The immense popularity of headless CMS has gained due to the improved flexibility offered to both developers and end-users.
A headless CMS opens potential doors to a secure digital world by removing the connection between viewing and accessing information. Also, it offers valuable benefits that are not obtained from a traditional content management system.
The Problem with Integrating Traditional CMS
Both traditional and headless CMS provides a way to CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) & store data. However, a traditional content management system only displays data while headless CMS adds an API to it. Besides, there are many other disadvantages of using a traditional CMS like,
- Limited flexibility to design
- Difficult to maintain SEO of webpages
- Slow loading and additional maintenance costs
To overcome the challenges, headless CMS was introduced to boost customer productivity and enhance user experience.
What is Headless CMS?
A headless CMS platform comes with no front-end system but instead, it’s front-end agnostic approach thus, your content can be published anywhere with any framework. Following this approach, headless CMS only concerns with storing and delivering structured content. Best use cases for headless CMS are:
- Native mobile apps (iOS, Android, and Windows)
- Web apps that use JavaScript frameworks
- eCommerce websites enriched with product information.
Why Headless CMS and Why Now?
There are 4 big reasons why headless CMS is popular among businesses.
Multiple devices, One Content Management System
We have many new channels like websites, apps, wearables, and so on. With a headless CMS, you can distribute your content in several places which saves both time and effort. eCommerce is a great example to use headless CMS as it needs to push content across multiple channels at the same time.
Intuitive & Rich Web Experience
While opting for CMS development services, you must weigh the pros and cons of every CMS to make a smarter decision. Leveraging the capabilities front-end framework, the headless content management system developers deliver richer digital experiences.
Flexible with Extra Security
Every headless CMS comes with a well-defined API thus, developers can spend more time focusing on content creation rather than managing content. Moreover, it offers the utmost flexibility and compatibility to control user experience from one convenient backend. It lowers the risk of DDoS attacks as headless CMS doesn’t allow access to everyone from the CMS database.
Future-Proof Maintenance
When it comes to re-branding, there is no need to do any technical changes within the CMS. Many businesses prefer headless CMS to improve the load time of a website. Using a headless CMS, developers can display content via React app, resulting in better performance than using traditional CMS i.e. WordPress.
Traditional Vs Headless Vs Decoupled CMS Architecture
Traditional CMS Architecture
In traditional CMS architecture, everything is tightly linked with each other i.e. backend to frontend. The content management backend and database are coupled together to work within the same system that delivers and publish content to multiple devices.
It compromises of
- A database to content and digital assets
- A content management backend to create content
- An application to create and apply design schemas
- A frontend where all the published content is displayed
Decoupled CMS Architecture
Decoupled CMS separates the backend and frontend of a website into two different systems content creation & storage and data presentation to its users through an interface. When the content is created in the backend, it takes an agnostic approach while combining fast web services and APIs to deliver raw content to the frontend of any device or channel.
It comprises of
- A database to store content and digital assets
- A content management backend to create content
- An API to connect content management backend with the frontend
- A content publishing frontend
A decoupled CMS combines the advantages of both headless CMS and traditional CMS. A few benefits of using decoupled CMS are:
- Enables omnichannel delivery
- Improves reliability and performance
- Strict security guidelines
Headless CMS Architecture
This is a subset of decoupled architecture. Both content management systems deliver content from a database through a web service or API. The key differentiator is the presentation layer as Headless CMS does not contain a frontend system or presentation environment.
With this, you can push the same content to any platform including a website, app, or a wearable device as the content isn’t bound by a predetermined user interface.
It comprises of
- A database to store content and digital assets
- A content management backend to create content
- An API to connect content management backend with the frontend
- The ability to connect to any publishing frontend, allowing organizations to choose desired front-end technology.
Conclusion
CMS revolution is driving up demand for more customizable, flexible, and scalable systems that deliver what customers exactly want. A reliable CMS development company offers optimum solutions depending on the client’s requirements. An omnichannel CMS helps you publish content at once with a single authoring point and deploy it anywhere you want without any stress.
