Evolution of CMS to Headless CMS

CMS has been present on the web right from inception. The early Generation (Gen 1)systems used Hypertext delivered as static content in markup languages during the early nineties. Gen 2 saw the fusion of Databases and CMS come into play due to the need for a reliable update to the content. However, editing content needs a steeper learning curve, if not familiar with HTML as they came without WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get).

Content Management Application (CMA) & Content Delivery Application (CDA). Content Delivery Application updates the content on the website.

WYSIWYG CMS entered the market at the end of the nineties and early 2000. Open-source played a crucial role in giving rise to monolithic CMS like OpenCMS, Drupal, WordPress. Alfresco, a widely used enterprise CMS entered the market in early 2006. The rise of Application Programming Interface API (web2.0) allowed web systems to work with multiple other systems giving rise to Gen 3 CMS.

A headless CMS solves the above problems by using GraphQL. It is called headless because the frontend (View) part is absent compared to CMSs with head.

Current generation CMS Gen X:

With the increase of content consumption platforms like Web, Mobile Apps, IoT Apps, Smart TVs, etc., managing the APIs effectively across platforms and services lead to the development of GraphQL by Facebook. The rise of GraphQL meant the transfer of power to the client app developers.

BFF (backend for frontend) was born at SoundCloud, to add layers on top of the monolith system, reducing friction and giving frontend teams ownership to develop layers.

Ref: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/bff-soundcloud

The following would be my key reasons to different stakeholders in an enterprise to use Headless GraphQL CMS

CTO/Head of Engineering

1. Faster time to market.
2. Avoid drawbacks of managing Monolithic systems w.r.t., tight coupling, Horizontal Scalability, Continuous Deployment.
3. Less number of requests from the Marketing team.
4. Build on top of the existing CMS.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

5. Easily integrate content from multiple systems and deliver across platforms.
6. Easy maintenance of API.
7. More secure for public consumption of content.
8. Enabling the company with a future-ready technology, which is agnostic to the client.

CMO/Marketing Team Lead

1. Less dependency on the tech team to build new pages.
2. DIY-Easily adds/edit and manage content.
3. Manage omnichannel content from one place with ease.

CFO

1. Reduce costs — Due to fewer tech resources.
2. Minimum technical team involvement to create new functionality leading to fewer costs.

Client Developers/Tech Lead

Photo by Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash

1. Avoid under fetching and over fetching of data.
2. Clean and simple code.
3. More power to frontend developers and cross-platform support.

CEO

1. Increasing efficiency, reducing dependencies, and making internal teams happy, why not try Headless CMS.

Case-studies

A few Headless CMS case-studies from different sectors and their experience

Healthcare: https://graphcms.com/case-studies/pharmadoctor-case-stud

Travel/Hospitality: https://graphcms.com/case-studies/ketchum-booking-case-study

Telecom: https://graphcms.com/case-studies/telenor-case-study

Sports/Entertainment: https://graphcms.com/case-studies/dtm-case-study

Conclusion

For more case studies across sectors like Fintech, Hospitality, E-commerce, etc., https://graphcms.com/case-studies

GraphCMS is one of the major players in the Headless CMS space.

In the next story, I will come up with a comparative study of different players in the Headless CMS space.