Introducing Acquia Service for Building a Headless Content Management System (CMS)

An emerging trend in web-based programming is the use of Headless CMS technology as a shared content platform. A Headless CMS platform such as Acquia Headless Lighting works as a decoupled content repository that enables content editors to store and manage structured content for any React application as the front end. So, is the Acquia Headless Lighting solution the right choice for implementing a Headless CMS environment? Here is an evaluation.

What is Acquia Headless Lighting?

Acquia Headless Lighting is an API-based backend content management repository that can be easily used by frontend web applications. As a frontend web developer, this tool provides you with easy access to a cloud-hosted content repository for developing and delivering web applications.

Built using Drupal, Acquia Headless Lighting provides a user-friendly and intuitive interface for the purpose of data modelling, content management, and web administration. Some of its features include:

1. Handling of rich web media.
2. Content workflow management with scheduling.
3. Role-based user permissions.

How to create a Headless CMS environment using Acquia

Here are some features of Acquia Headless Lighting that you can use to create a Headless CMS environment:

JSON APIs for Content Service

Acquia Headless Lighting uses JSON and Content APIs for Node.js applications to communicate with Drupal-based content stores. As a web developer, you can continue to use JSON and JavaScript to execute Node.js content service requests. The Content APIs can also be used to modify data models and other configurations to serve multiple content pieces in a single request.

User Environment

As a web administrator, you can configure user interface options for the administrative backend on the Acquia Headless Lighting user environment. The Acquia user environment is more intuitive for creating and managing content without the restriction of how the frontend Drupal application will render its presentation.

Use of the Drupal Content Source

As a developer, you can create a sub-profile of the Acquia Headless Lighting and expose the same data through multiple JSON API services generated by the JSON API module.

OAuth2 Authentication Standard

Acquia Headless Lighting uses the industry-standard OAuth2 authentication to authenticate users and code using APIs. Following successful authentication, Acquia can utilise the capabilities of the native Drupal permission system to authorise specific content and user actions.

Ease of upgrades

Every frontend web application built using Acquia will have easy access to all the available upgrades of both Drupal and the Headless Lighting solution. Additionally, all Acquia applications are provided with an easy update path comprising of new features, fixed bugs, security patches, and component changes.

Conclusion

Along with creating a more intuitive environment for web developers, Acquia Headless CMS solution provides developers with easy access to the rich Drupal content repository.

Part of The Ogilvy Group, Pennywise Solutions has a wealth of experience building websites on Drupal/Acquia and helps business enterprises to optimise their Acquia platform to build a more secure and robust application and lower the overall cost of ownership.