As headless CMS rises in popularity, IT leaders might wonder if it's a fad or if it will permanently affect the content management industry. Learn more in this expert tip.
The digital world moves faster every day. Organizations need to be agile and efficient to keep pace with rapid technological change. As organizations publish content to support omnichannel content experiences -- with images, videos and text -- they might struggle to manage content across multiple platforms.
This challenge has led to an increase in headless content management systems (CMSes). A headless CMS removes a CMS's back end from its front-end presentation. Headless CMS vendors offer a single repository from which authors can create, manage and distribute content to all consumer channels. But is headless CMS the future or simply a passing trend?
What is a headless CMS?
A headless CMS is a content repository that supports a structured content model with a set of RESTful APIs. As creative teams add content to the headless CMS, applications that need the content can use the APIs to pull it dynamically. For instance, those APIs can pull mission statements for About Us pages or product information for online catalogs, documentation pages and email campaigns.
When authors write content for a headless CMS, they typically don't worry about how it looks on the webpage. They write to provide information, not the design. The headless CMS process offers a speedy implementation, as authors can create content before the system design is complete. Also, if the organization wants to redesign the website, a headless CMS enables it to use existing content for design decisions.
Additionally, when authors update content, all channels can immediately synchronize to show the update. This enables omnichannel experience management without the need to invest in a digital experience platform.
Evolution of CMSes
When web content management (WCM) began, the standard WCM architecture was decoupled in nature. People created, designed and stored content on the back-end server. They published everything to separate web servers, which hosted the websites for security reasons and because early web servers were not that powerful.
With Web 2.0, a shift occurred that combined management and presentation components into a single web server. Content teams required a more functional web server to manage comments and create interactive environments. These new WCM architectures marked the move from web content to digital experiences. Decoupled architectures still exist, but they struggle to meet new content demands.
A headless CMS is a content repository that supports a structured content model with a set of RESTful APIs.
Headless CMSes enable organizations to keep as much interactivity on their websites and social media profiles as they need. These systems take the decoupled architecture a step further, removing all CMS components from the web server. The headless CMS is unaware of which services and applications use the content, so any system within the organization can use content items.
Is headless CMS the future?
For midsize to large organizations with teams that manage content for multiple channels, a headless CMS can improve efficiency. Over time, that efficiency can increase and omnichannel publishing can improve. Analyst firms, such as Forrester, have also noted the trend and demonstrated how established CMS vendors are investing in the technology.
The parallels with the shift to content services in the enterprise content management (ECM) space also indicate that headless CMS is the future. A significant number of organizations successfully store content independently in a structured manner, while different applications or channels use the content. Some headless CMS vendors might look at the content services market and decide to address ECM challenges.
Tips for how to deploy a headless CMS
As headless CMSes separate the content repository from the front end, they force organizations to design and build content models independent of how they deliver the content. Web developers must consider how they populate their designs by using APIs that reflect the organization's content structure.
The following tips can help organizations successfully implement a headless CMS:
Create a structured content model. Organizations should first create a structured content model that reflects connections between content. A headless CMS's structured content model reflects an organization's content -- not its website or mobile design. It enhances the editing UX and is reflected in the developers' APIs. This model must make sense to everyone involved, such as authors and developers, to ensure effective content management.
Model the entire organization. Content managers should take the time to model everything about their organization at a high level, including items they don't initially plan to publish. This enables IT and content management teams to understand all content relationships and often reveals unexpected connections that improve the model's usefulness.
Create detailed style guides. Written guidelines walk authors through the content creation process. These typically include key components and best practices for all written content types, the level of detail required and suggested word counts. Content leaders should train authors on these guidelines and their purpose to optimize content creation.
Think about the editing experience. Many authors are used to seeing how their content looks on a website as they write. An intuitive editing interface can help authors feel confident in the content they create, despite the lack of a front-end template. This interface should reflect the guidelines to assist authors in writing content compliant with those guidelines.
Pick the right presentation layer. While the CMS may be headless, the presentation layer still requires a head. Content managers and IT teams should choose a web development framework that matches the skill sets of existing developers and resources. Most frameworks work if the development team is comfortable with them.
Rethink scaling. As most headless CMSes are deployed as SaaS offerings, organizations only need to scale the presentation layer. In a headless context, the presentation layer simply renders the content, resulting in smaller, more nimble front-end servers.
Many of these tips are variations on what content managers should do when deploying a traditional CMS. Yet, many organizations skip these steps when deploying a traditional CMS. Using a headless CMS helps instill discipline into the overall system architecture, authoring environment and internal processes that make a CMS effective. By following these steps, organizations increase their chances of generating significant ROI.
Key takeaways
The move to a headless CMS is not like flipping a light switch. It requires organizations to make infrastructure investments and introduces two separate components -- the front end and back end -- which IT professionals must maintain and update.
On the other hand, these tools offer the flexibility to overhaul only one of those components at a time when problems occur. This can benefit organizations, because it lets them improve one aspect of the system without interfering with operations on the other.
Additionally, organizations that move to a headless CMS can save themselves work in the future. As companies typically redesign their websites every few years, isolating content from future redesigns makes an organization more agile online. Headless CMSes also require smaller updates to the underlying software components, reducing risk amid infrastructure updates.
Any organization that wants to change its web and content infrastructure must consider a headless CMS. It is part of the future for CMSes.
Editor's note: This article was updated to include tips on deploying a headless CMS.
Laurence Hart is director of consulting services at CGI Federal and has more than 20 years of IT experience.
