CMS Headless, KÉZAKO?
A headless CMS is a content management platform that focuses solely on creating, managing and publishing content, without worrying about the visual appearance or presentation of the content.
Unlike traditional CMS, which provide predefined templates for the presentation of content, a headless CMS does not provide a prebuilt front-end. Instead, it focuses exclusively on content management and publishing, using an API to transmit the content to a third-party app or website that will be responsible for presentation. The API can also be used by several consumers in a multi-channel context: website, mobile application, information system application, connected objects, etc.
By using a headless CMS, the frontend can be developed in any programming language (often in JavaScript), without constraints imposed by the CMS. This flexibility allows you to create more personalized user experiences that are more tailored to user needs.
Furthermore, the development of a frontend based on the use of APIs makes it possible to aggregate content coming from several sources/APIs : editorial content coming from the headless CMS API, product image coming from a PIM, data of the connected user coming from the directory,…
And API-First, what does that mean?
This guide is not intended to compare all solutions on the market; We were talking earlier about “traditional CMS” which will not be part of our analysis.
However, what we mean by “traditional CMS” are all CMS solutions that are not API-first!
- APIs should be consistent and reusable, which can be done by using an API description language to establish a “contract” for how the API is supposed to behave.
- Establishing an (interface) contract requires spending more time designing an API, which also often involves additional planning and collaboration with stakeholders who provide feedback on the designing the API, all before the code is written.
- That APIs meet regulatory and security requirements.
Being API-First : The advantages... and the disadvantages
Not all CMS solutions are API-first. And that's okay, because it certainly has advantages, but also disadvantages:
Performance : being API-first is the guarantee of having the most optimized information flow possible, which ensures optimal performance!
Development teams can work in parallel : the API first involves establishing a contract between services which is followed by the teams. Developers don't have to wait for updates to an API to be released to move to the next API.
Ensuring a Good Developer Experience : API consumers are most often developers, and developer experience can make or break the success of an API!
Preview : completely decorrelating the content of its rendering makes the notion of preview more complex to achieve than on a “traditional” CMS.
Integration complexity : The API must be compatible with a wide range of systems, which can be difficult to achieve. Additionally, there may be security, cache management (and cache invalidation), or performance issues to resolve during the integration process.
Governance and management : API-first development requires a strong governance and management framework to ensure that APIs are designed and used consistently and securely.
Solutions on the test bench
Strapi is an open source content management platform, built with Node.js, that allows developers to create flexible and customizable APIs (strapi = “boostrap your API”) for their web and mobile applications.
With Strapi, developers can create custom data models, define relationships between models, and manage access permissions for different users.
Contentful offers a RESTful and GraphQL API for accessing content data, which can be used to power front-end applications.
Contentful offers an intuitive user interface for content management, allowing non-technical users to create and edit content, data models, custom fields, data relationships, and other features.
Directus is an open-source solution that allows you to easily manage database tables, create and modify data types and generate APIs in REST and GraphQL.
The solution also automatically creates a table for users and manages all user management (authentication, access rights, registration, invitations, 2FA, etc.). Directus is a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution for database and API management.
Prismic has designed its CMS to be developer-friendly and allow content teams to work independently.
You can quickly build the data structure you want for your different content types while keeping sections consistent and code clean and efficient.
Storyblock is known for its visual editor that allows your editorial team to intuitively manage and organize content: drag and drop reusable components, preview content in real time, manage images (and assets) without worrying about duplication formats and resolutions...
For better collaboration between teams, you can create and manage custom workflows for each content type.
Our criteria to compare
| Open Source |
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| On-premises/SaaS | An On-premise CMS is installed on your company's servers and is managed internally. This allows for greater flexibility and full control over data and security. A SaaS CMS is hosted on a cloud and is managed by a third party. This allows for rapid deployment, easy accessibility and simplified maintenance. |
| Extensions/plugins | Add-ons that can be added to the CMS to add specific functionality. CMSs that have a large developer community often have more extensions/plugins options. |
| GraphQL | Data query technology that enables more efficient communication between the CMS and the frontend. CMS that support GraphQL generally have faster performance and better user experience. |
| Publishing workflow | Procedure used to submit, review and publish content to the website. CMSs that have a customizable and configurable publishing workflow offer greater flexibility to content publishers. |
| Versioning/Scheduling | It helps track changes to content over time. Scheduling allows you to schedule content to be published on a specific date and time. |
| Multilingual (i18n) and search | Multilingual and content search are central to a professional digital experience! |
The game !
The Smile teams are working on a more detailed analysis to compare all these tools. Stay tuned!
Focus on our partner: STRAPI
We are proud to be new partners of the French API-first solution Strapi .
This solution has many advantages:
- Fully Open-source
- 400 contributors, one million downloads and more than 300 plugins
- Developed by Strapi: for example Internationalization (i18n), SEO, Documentation, GraphQL
- Verified by Strapi: for example Sitemap
- Community: for example CKEditor 5
- Available on-premise for more flexibility, fully hostable on the public cloud
- A SaaS version which has just been available
- A solution made in France!
