AI, machine learning, and other new technology will continue to disrupt content management. The way I see it, there are actually five key benefits for companies who choose to adopt secure, scalable, and future-proof headless CMS technology.

1. Headless CMS Increases Developer Productivity, Longevity

A traditional CMS limits you to a single development platform. Aside from only being able to take advantage of a sliver of the ever-growing technology universe, this also limits you to having to find and hire a very specific type of developer: well-versed in one specific language, already familiar with your CMS, and complacent with using that CMS so as not to interrupt your business processes.

Well, it takes a ton of resources to find a unicorn like that. Instead, save yourself some time and resources and build a development team that loves their jobs by replacing your traditional CMS with an API-first CMS.

An API-first CMS empowers your development team to use what they think will be a perfect solution in every unique situation. In addition to being more productive, developers will stick around for the long haul if the role encourages them to learn and exercise a variety of skills.

2. Headless CMS Future-Proofs Your Business (and Content)

It’s human nature to want to plan a project based on a static, “finished” state we have laid out in our heads. However, it’s the nature of technology to continuously evolve beyond even our best-laid plans. To reconcile the two, adopt an API-first headless CMS.

A headless CMS allows businesses to separate the process of creating content from the process of planning how content is going to be displayed to end users. This allows us to create content modules that are fluid enough to evolve separately from each other and stand the test of time. And, when content isn’t anchored to a specific CMS platform, you’ll be able to switch out the technology upon which it’s hosted as needed.

3. Headless CMS Empowers a Delightful User Experience

Because it empowers them to use the best technology for the situation, an API-first CMS allows front-end developers to build delightful user interfaces that are simply not possible when using traditional, server-side CMS tech—all without limiting functionality or autonomy for content folks on the backend.

4. Headless CMS Makes Marketing Consistent in an Omnichannel Environment

The majority of shoppers have been shown to shop in in multiple physical and digital locations. The more active they are on different channels, the more likely they are to spend and engage.

For marketers, it’s vital to develop an approach that gives customers (and leads) an integrated, seamless experience whether they’re interacting with your brand online or in store. API-first headless CMS platforms are built to distribute content directly to a variety of channels and devices using the most optimal technology for each endpoint.

5. Headless CMS Improves Agility to Get You to Market Faster

When it comes to implementing and deploying updates to your content management system, no CMS is as fast or as simple as an API-first one. When the CMS itself is separate from any custom code, continuous deployment and other agile development techniques can be used to make changes quickly. API-first CMS also means predictable, easy-to-launch projects instead of the antiquated technologies and workarounds that come with a traditional CMS.

At the end of the day, if you want to remain relevant in a digitally-transformed business environment, an API-first CMS is critical.

Great question and one I hear a lot. For starters, you wouldn’t publish content by using only a headless CMS. The premise of a headless CMS is that you have complete freedom to create content, agnostic to where it goes and when, while the destination for that content pulls it through an API that calls the headless CMS. Any potential front end(s) are free to display content with complete flexibility, and that’s by design. Also, those front ends, such as a website or any other destination for content can be redesigned at will using the same content source (the headless CMS) but with a completely different pattern for consumption. This results in richer, faster changes to the way content is used. In a fast-changing technology landscape, this is very important.

Decoupled, on the other hand, simply means that the back end (the content creation tool) and the front end (a publishing tool) are separate systems. There is a clear line between those who create content and those who deliver it and consume that content. A decoupled CMS still has both the front and back ends, but they are separated systems. This can be set up with a traditional CMS or with a headless CMS, provided the systems allow for this separation. This pattern may be flexible or might not, depending on the limitations of the front end that is chosen. Unfortunately, in many instances, a decoupled CMS can be just as restrictive/inflexible as a traditional CMS, which is why headless is the better option.

Headless CMS's have a few different benefits from regular content management systems.

For starters, if you’re developing a mobile application or app for your company, it’s been proven that using headless CMSs can increase data loading speed by up to 40%.

Second of all, they reduce the need to input all of those extra fields into HTML which can slow down the site and at times even crash it. From a design perspective, there are just as many benefits - in this case making it easier to handle design and subsequently advertising across different platforms without having direct access to code which would otherwise require cooperation with developers on any updates that needed to be made.

Is choosing the right solution rather tough? Surely. That’s why recommendations can be really helpful. You may want to take a look at this headless CMS, we managed to implement it for our clients and it’s been working really well.

Hope it helps!

Long story short?

A decoupled CMS is proactive — it prepares content for presentation and pushes it into a delivery environment.

A headless CMS is reactive — it manages content, then just sits and waits for some process to ask for it.

Using a decoupled architecture, content can be prepared on the back end and delivered and presented proactively to various channels. As contrasted with Headless CMS, Headless CMS consists of only content and has no capability to present content to end-users. Content is created and managed, but it is only available when it is called by an API and delivered to applications and systems.

Thus, a headless CMS implementation is "API only, UI anywhere".

Users can push content to almost any device or channel with an internet connection. Due to the content's ability to adapt to any device connected via the Internet of Things (IoT), the content can be published to a website, an app, a wearable device, etc.

And here, you can find a guide on how to choose headless CMS for your business:

Hope it helps!

The biggest is simply in that a headless CMS is much more convenient to use, here’s why:

• A single headless CMS can serve unlimited digital channels so it’s a perfect for omnichannel campaigns
• Content editors can add, update or edit the content at the website (or other channel they use) straight away, without asking developers for help
• Headless CMS works as one central source for all of your company’s content and asset so you have everything stored in one place and not 10 different applications
• If you use a headless CMS, you can publish your content to any channel through an API – from websites to mobile apps, email marketing, voice-activated digital assistants, Apple Watch, AR/VR and more.

So basically, headless CMS is simply going to make your marketing team's job easier. When they use a headless CMS like Storyblok, they can add and publish the content on the website in a snap. Plus, if you need to quickly translate and localize the content, Storyblok has a feature for that as well. And through the API, the content can be published in all channels at once - how much of your time that would save? So going for the headless CMS is definitely a good idea.

I list some of the most touted benefits below. But keep in mind that these are relative and are not equally valid when compared to all coupled CMS options.

1. Freedom to retrieve content to any endpoint. If you're using a CMS like Drupal that has somewhat rigid templating rules, a headless approach takes away the template restrictions. This makes it easier to develop mobile apps that access the content, for example.
2. Staff flexibility. It's arguably harder to find great CMS developers than great front-end Angular developers. Using a headless model, if you can agree on your REST/JSON model, front end and mobile developers can more readily access the content repository.
3. Performance. Depending on your site's requirements, a headless CMS can export static HTML to any number of servers. For more dynamic sites, your servers don't have to manage template/layout work and your front-end code can do more of the heavy lifting for making the pages more dynamic.
4. Design flexibility. Sometimes the close coupling of data structures and design templates can "lock down" your design options (or your data structure options, depending on how you look at it). Even the most flexible coupled CMS tools inevitably make some compromise in overlapping design data and content data.
5. License costs. Depending on the product you use, you might not have to pay license fees for front-end servers that only retrieve data from a CMS server.
6. Technical agnosticism In theory if you put all the work in place to completely decouple all of the layers of your applications, you could even drop in a new CMS and not have to touch any of your client applications. In theory. And if you put in the work.

Many of these benefits are relative. Historically a lot of Drupal modules can only work in Drupal. All of the above points are therefore stark contrasts to something like standard Drupal.

The contrast isn't as stark with some other tools. Consider Sitecore. The choice of which layout to use is managed via the "head." But the layout itself is a plain .net page that makes calls to the Sitecore API and other services. That .net page can use any .net code (including code that calls a separate, agnostic service layer) and output HTML, XML, RSS, JSON, etc. So just remember there are degrees of portability and technical lock-in depending on the package you choose. (I am not arguing that Sitecore would not represent at least some vendor lock-in, just that a lot of the application logic can be implemented separately from the Sitecore code.)

Some considerations before committing to headless:

1. What will you use to manage security and granular access control?
2. How will you let users see what their content will look like when published? And who is responsible for reviewing it? One reason coupled solutions became more popular is that they allowed in-context editing of content with preview mode across any number of devices. Now, Anthony D'Angiolillo notes elsewhere that while that's how the products were sold, not all users use that feature as intended But you still need to consider who is responsible for ensuring data integrity and look and feel across all the places the repository content will be used.
3. How will you keep the data repository and its content validations in sync with UI expectations through all of those unlimited endpoints you want to support? And consider this in light of Anthony D'Angiolillo's comment about code deployments as well.
4. Cache management. Many coupled CMS have integrated cache management. Your headless solution needs to know when to go back to the repository and when to serve a cached version and when/how to let browsers know to clear a cached version.
5. If they are requirements, how could you handle personalization, profiling, CRM integration, print integration?
6. Are the new breed of tools still too new - are you prepared to "beta test" or limit yourself to a handful of choices?
7. What options does the headless CMS give you for exporting ALL information from the repository? You definitely have a weaker case for platform agnosticism if the repository does not allow you to export everything for import to a new CMS.

Of course the headless CMS implementation you choose might take all of the above into account. But if not you might have to write it all yourself.

To wrap up, there are definitely benefits to a headless model. But there are also trade-offs. The headless solution will require more initial planning, more development, and more discipline over time. And you might find that you're trading vendor/technology agnosticism for a lot of missing features and custom development. But over the long-term you might reap tremendous benefits.

Looking at the CMS landscape, I believe it is reasonable to limit our gaze to the upper echelon of options. For that I like W3Techs.com list, “Market share trends for content management systems” The list clearly shows, in order, that Wordpress, Joomla, & Drupal collectively represent 69% of all websites which use a CMS. Joomla hasn’t really entered the Headless scene yet, so we can remove them.

We’re left with Wordpress and Drupal.

While Wordpress has a REST API in core, it falls short of being an API FIRST CMS. Currently. WP developers need to author custom code to get much of the data out of the CMS for consumption by your FrontEnd architecture. Here’s a great blog post on all the code you need to write to really use Wordpress in a headless manner: Headless WordPress: The Ups And Downs Of Creating A Decoupled WordPress — Smashing Magazine That page also runs on Wordpress.

Drupal also includes REST API in core. Drupal has been strongly committed to an API FIRST architecture. Since Drupal 8 launched November 2015, Drupal has been committed to quickly evolving into a top choice for any headless architecture. With each Dot-Release (8.6, 8.7 etc) Drupal is making fundamental changes to the architecture to better facilitate Headless, or Decoupled, or Progressively Decoupled Architectures. To that point, in 4 weeks JSON API will also be include in core. It’s already easy to get your CMS data out of Drupal as a consumable endpoint. It is only getting easier.

Here are some excellent examples of Decoupled Drupal.

* www.eldumrett.is → React Native mobile app used by a food delivery service in Iceland.
* New York City Subway Signage → How long until your train reaches the platform to pick you up? Drupal and React controls signs throughout the city.
* Scan Stations & Kiosks For Visitor Authentication → Used for conferences, offices, to control access, offer assistance, keep access logs, etc.
* Estee Lauder : A Global Learning Experience Platform → Built a HUGE learning platform that headlessly delivers data to a wide range of services, mobile devices, apps, desktops, etc.
* www.ashday.com → A Drupal development shop that went Headless and built out some amazing layout controls on the BackEnd that effect layout on the FrontEnd via Paragraph Entities.

Am I biased? ABSOLUTLEY!
Days ago I just presented at the local React.Indy meetup on the Topic of “When Your React Front-End Meets A Drupal Back-End... Everyone Wins!”
I stand behind that statement. :-)

A monolithic (web) CMS does everything — back-end content managment, front-end user experience, and often analytics, personalization, and so on (even email marketing).

A headless CMS helps you manage content, and publish it out through APIs.

I would argue “headless” is a subset of functionality of “monolithic”. A headless CMS doesn’t have any of the front-end/user-facing functionality. But many monolithic CMS can be used headless (you just ignore/discard a lot of their functionality, as long as they have good APIs).

In practice, that’s mostly true of “monolithic” but “decoupled” CMS, where the back-end and front-end are very separate concerns. You can discard the front-end that comes with it, or treat it as a working POC and start from there, but you don’t need to. However, most monolithic CMS are actual monoliths — there is no (real) separation between back-end and front-end. (Most popular open source CMS are like that, e.g. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.) In those cases, it gets very hard to use them headless — unlike decoupled CMS, they were never designed for separated out front-ends, and using them “headless” is a bit like hitting screws with a hammer.

Decoupled was what came before headless, for different reasons: mainly security and performance of the front-ends. (Nothing’s served faster than the static HTML FTP’d to a webserver from a CMS, to name an extreme old school example, and it’s hard to compromise the back-end by attacking the front-end if it’s a very controlled one-way pipeline.) The same principles are still useful in headless though, but the reason is different (full control of the user experience without encumbrance by the CMS is now the main concern).

The systems that came in between (where back-end/front-end are closely intertwined monoliths) feel decidedly old-fashioned now, and oddly, some old school systems suddenly have the edge again.

The concept of Headless CMS is a bit like the structure of a worm, in that it decouples the content layer from the backend complex, independent in both form and function. This means creation, publication, and management of content can be done independently. Developers have a lot to gain from this separation; it makes them faster builders and deployers of content with added flexibility.

Headless CMS decouples the content management or content repository from the front-end layer. The content creation, management, and publication can be done independently, also this decoupled architecture makes the development process faster and gives flexibility.

Who uses it?

Web developers, mobile app developers.
and following are some industries that can benefit from using headless CMS.
1. E-commerce- Headless Commerce

2. Healthcare

3. Startup

how??
Read how these industries benefited from headless CMS. Our blog explains headless CMS in 5 mins.

Incerro is an official Sanity agency partner. We offer digital solutions, using headless web and mobile application development.

A headless CMS, also known as headless software or headless system, is any type of back-end content management system. You can manage content in one place and deploy it on any front end you choose with a headless CMS. A headless CMS allows you to integrate content into any system, software, or website by simply calling the APIs it exposes.

The following table lists some useful features of the headless CMS.

You might want to check out Storyblok if you're looking for a CMS. For their website, click here:

It means that the content management software is decoupled from the backend content management software. This approach is similar to the headless marketing approach - it requires less effort to integrate the CMS with marketing tools. The marketing team is in full control of content marketing once it's created in the CMS. It is also possible to move content marketing to another provider.

Of course, these are just a few advantages and you are yet to discover more if you actually start working with a headless CMS.

Kentico Kontent may be worth checking out in that case.

hope it helps!

With the growing popularity of retail, many people have been discussing and comparing decoupled and headless technologies. I've seen many people arguing which one is better, the decoupled or headless CMS. Let's discuss how we can compare them both.

While traditional CMSs are helpful in the standard approach, they aren't going to help scale faster and more agilely. It is where the headless comes into play as headless CMS solutions.

So now it's time to compare them and let you all know the difference between decoupled and headless CMS architectures.

What is decoupled CMS?

As the name implies, a decoupled CMS is one where both the ends, i.e., the front-end and backend systems, are separated from each other-or they are "decoupled."

However, in conventional CMS, the front and back ends are tightly held together, putting the system under pressure to be rigid in customizing and creating an optimum user experience.

That's why in a decoupled CMS, both ends are decoupled, making great customization possible. Through the platform, owners can have the upper hand and control how the website and app should look without changing the content frequently.

What is Headless CMS?

Typically, headless CMSs offer an excellent way for developers to use the presentation layer in many different ways. This is why headless is considered the developers' delight. All of it can be made possible by an interactive framework like React. In practice, headless CMS has a detached presentation layer as the developers can quickly design front-end experiences and code as per the requirements. So here, there is no restriction on the backend technologies as it can function as it can only rely on the APIs to call data from the front-end to deliver content.

So who wins the race here? The answer is in developers' heads, as the buzz is mainly among developers. Most developers around the world have fallen in love with headless CMS. But why?

Headless is a revolutionary and game-changer. While decoupled CMS certainly still helps out developers there, headless is something that breaks all other current ecommerce technologies.

The true strengths of headless are only beneficial if you put your business users first.

However, if you are building a stand-alone business website, particularly for eCommerce, headless plays a legacy role in serving everyone, after all, in setting up and running retail businesses.

A headless WordPress slightly operates and functions on different tangents. As the name itself suggests, it pulls the head (front-end) from the body (back-end). Which means it basically dissociates all the front end management tools from the back end management tools that are installed in the same interface.

With the help of Headless WordPress, a marketing and content team can effortlessly use the familiar WordPress interface. It also helps the development team to use the mechanisms they enjoy at their comfort level.

We would also like to bring up a few of the Headless WordPress Benefits:

• It stimulates and promotes faster website performance.
• It helps you build a robust security to your website.
• It facilitates great flexibility.
• It helps in efficient web or app management.
• Alike traditional WordPress, it also helps in building tailored granular control.
• It opens the door to expansion by elevating scalability.

We hope our answer helps you understand the Headless WordPress more closely. For a professional Headless WordPress website development, you can reach out to the experts of Windzoon Technologies.

The fundamental difference between a headless CMS and a decoupled one is the amount of JavaScript framework at work. In a headless CMS , the front-end is typically controlled with a JavaScript framework. This means that the server-side software is used simply to store, organize, and structure data. The front-end is then responsible for displaying that data in HTML. On the other hand, in a decoupled CMS the front-end is in charge of data retrieval, rendering, queries, queries, and more queries. This means that the server-side software is used like any traditional CMS, but it doesn't access the front-end in any way. This ensures that the software can be maintained without any worry that the front-end is breaking.

Nowadays everyone in the WordPress world is talking about headless WordPress(Including us). Decoupling the back end from the front end is poised to be a big part of the future of WordPress in general; that is something that we will see more of.

In a couple of years, WordPress has built the foundation for this development, especially with the adoption of WP REST API.

To answer this question here we will go over a few examples of headless WordPress.

Frontity - It is a dynamic framework for using headless WordPress with React Js front end. The website is super fast and slick. I encourage you to have a look around. If you like what you see, you can also develop your website with the frontity and test the setup yourself.

TechCrunch - So, TechCrunch is often one of the most suitable examples of well-known sites using WordPress. It is the biggest technology blog on the internet. It is hosted by WordPress. 3 - 4 years ago they redeveloped their website because they want to take the best technology approach. because of redevelopment, they saw many benefits like easy maintenance, faster performance and it’s performed more like a native application. So basically it’s a good approach.

propernounco - It is also a headless WordPress website. they use WordPress as the CMS and NextJs on the frontend.

There are many more examples of headless WordPress. So it is present in the world and has great success.

Long story short: headless CMS is a content repository + API.

It is considered to be a CMS that allows data management, but does not support the frontend (head) part. Instead, it provides the prepared data via REST API, so you can choose any number of frontend channels on your own, in any technology.

What are the benefits of headless CMS? Let me just introduce three of them.

• Freedom to create a front-end. Using the API, you are able to publish content on any device and channel.
• Greater possibilities of using the API. Application programming interfaces allow technologies to communicate with each other.
• Separating content management and system appearance.

If you’re looking for some more tips, and a reliable provider of headless CMS, here is where you’ll find the best of both worlds:

Hope it helps!

Headless CMS is a type of content management system.

There are so many advantages to using this, it's hard to list them all. I'll start by listing the 4-5 reasons that come first to mind.

Headless CMS = faster website loading time, headless CMS has spreadsheet tracking features, headless CMS has better SEO optimization, headless CMS has very fast deployment time, and finally programming with Headless is easier for developers then normal programming.

If you’re looking for the right CMS, though, I’d suggest checking out this guide as it provides a lot of handy insights:

A decoupled CMS is not a headless CMS, however, as both architectures remain available. A decoupled CMS has built-in, flexible publishing capabilities that businesses can choose to use -- or not. How the two architectures interact is entirely autonomous. Using the CMS head is optional.

Headless CMSs are different. They don't offer front-end design or publishing capabilities. They have one job -- to create and manage digital content delivery. A decoupled CMS still has a head, but the head isn't in control of the body and vice-versa.

The difference may seem small, but a decoupled CMS offers more out-of-the-box options than a headless system. From a publishing standpoint, it's preemptive. It helps your team prepare content for publication and push it out to the web in a hurry. Additionally, decoupled CMS also allows you to publish to whatever medium or application you specify. It offers total control over how your content will appear on different channels

If you’re looking for some more tips, and a reliable provider of headless CMS, here is more information:

Well, headless CMS is still quite a mystery for some.

Headless CMS is a new concept that has not been around for all that long, and with it comes its own challenges and considerations. Many developers who come from a development background will have worked exclusively with PHP frameworks before coming up against headless CMS, which means instead of being able to rely on tried-and-tested conventions of coding you need to go back to the drawing board and start again from scratch.

This is why so many people automatically assume that the other reason why so few developers use headless CMS is because they simply don't know about it or haven't heard about it yet - even though there may be no better time than now to take up this newly emerging technology!

However, I’m really vouching for headless CMS, the future is bright.

hope it helps!

Of course they are safer! A traditional CMS consists of a front-end, back-end, database, and often plugins. All parts must be connected together. However, in the headless CMS, the front and back-end are separated, but the content is sent via API. What's the benefit? This gives less scope for hackers to break into your site.

Remember, however, that you never feel 100% safe. That is why it is worth browsing through various CMSs and checking which ones offer the best security. One of the tools I recommend you is Storyblok. It uses a web application firewall for its APIs. Additionally, it will perform regular safety tests, and you can also do them manually.