Are Headless CMSs The Future Of Content Management?

Traditional content management systems — think WordPress or Joomla! — are tightly integrated monoliths. The front-end and back-end are designed to work together, and that tight coupling is reflected in the code. When you use WordPress, you manage content in the admin back-end and view it as theme-shaped HTML produced by the same application.

Headless content management systems, which are increasing in popularity, are different. There are different configurations of headless CMS, but one of the more popular approaches is to decouple the front-end from the back-end altogether. The back-end runs on a server and is used to manage content in the database via an API. There is no traditional front-end.

Instead, there might be many different front-ends, each with a limited set of functionality appropriate to its intended use. The provision of services and data via APIs is standard in the industry: it makes sense that content management would follow a similar path. Headless CMSs are also more flexible than their monolithic ancestors.

Consider a modern news publisher. The job of a CMS is to ingest content and metadata, organize it, and distribute it for consumption by an audience. With a traditional CMS, adding content means logging into an inflexible interface and dealing with what is often a less than pleasant user experience.

Access to a headless CMS is via any application that supports its API. That might be a dedicated mobile application, a web application, or even directly from devices like connected cameras.

For content distribution, the front-ends can be just as various. Content can be distributed to mobile applications, web apps, and to syndication partners who take some subset of content for publication on their own platforms. Clearly, it’s also quite simple to extract content and meta data for social media posting too.

Or, as Cody Arsenault puts it:

“If you feel like a traditional CMS imposes too much rigidity onto your project, then a headless option may help you more accurately achieve your vision. Mobile developers especially benefit from headless content management since the API allows them to deliver content to an iOS or Android app from the same backend.”

One of the smartest decisions made by the WordPress project in recent years was the introduction of a comprehensive JSON REST API. WordPress is, by the standards of the web, old technology. Built in PHP with more than a decade of technical debt, WordPress was being outpaced by more modern systems.

But with the API, it becomes simple to use WordPress as a headless CMS. Organizations that want to benefit from the WordPress ecosystem and many years of development can adopt WordPress without being constrained by its rigid interface paradigms. And, just as important, developers of WordPress integrations aren’t forced to use PHP. They can use any language they like to interact with the API. In practice, that means JavaScript, a language taking the place of PHP on the server in many scenarios.

For companies that require a simple website, installing WordPress on a dedicated server and using it in the traditional manner remains the best course of action. But for server hosting clients that require more  and control over their content, a headless CMS is worth consideration.