CMS, the Content Management System for websites or web applications deal with the creation and management of content. The backend CMS application help users to create, view, update and delete content. Traditional CMS like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla are called “monolithic” and it requires a separate graphical user interface (GUIs) to insert content in preferred style. The websites will display content in such a way that it has been inserted on the backend CMS webpage. This traditional CMS approach has different drawbacks like inability to serve content on other devices other than websites, lack of flexibility, need for CMS specific developers, time-consumption and expense on maintenance. Most of such limitations in CMS can be eliminated using recent headless CMS approach. The basic concept of headless CMS is discussed in this article.

HEADLESS CMS - AN INTRODUCTION

Headless CMS is a back-end content management system that makes content accessible on different devices like desktop, mobile, tablet, IoT devices, smartwatches, etc...  using a RESTful API. This CMS focus on storing and delivering content and it contains an interface to publish content and an API to deliver content to different platforms. In headless CMS, content is retrieved using API and use structured languages for returning data.

If comparing the traditional CMS and headless CMS, both have the same function to create and manage content, and it stores the content in the database. The primary difference is, head of the traditional CMS is a presentation layer that is the front-end for inserting the data, and the headless CMS doesn’t have this presentation layer. In headless CMS, the content has more importance than front-end and user doesn’t need to worry about how the content will be visible online.

What are the benefits of headless CMS? Headless CMS provides fast, consistent, and responsive user experience and the published content can be accessed from different devices. This CMS database is protected from different cyber attacks to offer security to stored data. Also, this CMS will speed up the production and help the front-end developers to create websites without considering backend restrictions. Most importantly, the headless CMS approach is suitable for future technologies like smartwatches and IoT devices.

Not all content management systems are headless, headless CMS is preferred for publishing content on native mobile applications, for websites/web applications using javascript framework, enhancing e-commerce websites, while using a static site generator, or if content needs to be posted on different platforms all at once.

The Headless CMS has different features like:

• Improve Workflow and Collaboration
• Organize Content Repositories
• Multi-Channel Publishing
• Cloud Scalability
• Multi-language Support
• Platform Independent
• Cross-Platform Support
• Code Simplicity
• Enhanced User Controls
• Simplifies Image Management