Learn what every business must consider before adopting headless CMS technology

Are you looking for a Content Management System (CMS) that can use the same content across various channels including websites, mobile apps, virtual reality space, and more? In other words, a CMS that can enable you to publish your content without any restrictions and across multiple channels and devices.

The Headless CMS technology could be the answer you are looking for as it focuses on separating the content from the presentation, thus presenting content tailored to your customer's device. How does Headless (also referred to as Decoupled) CMS differ from traditional CMS systems like WordPress and Drupal? Headless CMS is designed without the “head” or the front-end code that defines how your content should be presented to your customer. Headless CMS platforms like Prismic offer a simple and easy-to-use user interface for managing content.

Traditional CMS platforms like Drupal and WordPress also provide headless CMS support. While WordPress provides the REST API functionality, Drupal  version 8.0 is bundled with content APIs. However, unlike true 'headless' solutions, they lack functionalities that allow for content reuse, high scalability, and security.

So, is the Headless CMS technology the right choice for your content? Here are a few things you must consider before your decision.

Considerations for Adopting Headless CMS Technology

Among the primary considerations for adopting Headless CMS is that your content must have multiple use cases, including:

• Multiple websites

• Native mobile apps

• Use in kiosk and desktop applications

• External channels or partners

Pennywise Solutions offers enterprise-wide decoupled CMS solutions for a variety of websites with features such as rich media management, social media integration, and workflow management.

Apart from targeting multiple channels with your content, you must take into account the following considerations:

Organisation Goals

Does adopting Headless CMS fulfil organisational goals and objectives, such as:

• Do you want your CMS platform to improve content production or generate more business leads?

• Does your CMS implementation justify your operating costs?

• How much time are you prepared to invest into the CMS implementation process?

• Can you divide the CMS roll-out into multiple phases or begin with a CMS pilot project before growing the CMS implementation to other functional divisions of your organisation?

• What is the type of content that you want to produce, and for which channels and devices?

CMS Infrastructure

Does your current infrastructure support the adoption of the Headless CMS environment? Here is an infrastructural checklist that you must consider:

• On-premise or cloud-based?

Are you considering a cloud-based CMS solution for more agility, lower maintenance costs, and a shorter duration to market? You must evaluate if your headless CMS solution is a complete Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution or just supports cloud hosting.

• Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

Do you need to set up the CDN yourself or is your Headless CMS solution optimized to make use of CDNs for faster content delivery?

• Support for scalability and availability

Pennywise solutions has deployed scalable Enterprise CMS for customers using Acquia, MS Office Sharepoint Server, and SiteCore.

Content publishing and marketing

You must also consider your content publishers and marketeers before switching to a headless CMS environment. Some considerations include:

• Is it easy to create and modify structured content for easy content production with the Headless CMS technology?

• Are you over-reliant on your CMS developers, or does the Headless CMS platform enable non-technical users to create and publish content?

• Does your CMS technology personalise your customer experiences?

Other Considerations

Other considerations include:

• Your CMS development team is completely responsible for the maintenance of your content including fixing of bugs and issues.

• Higher implementation time due to substantial code writing. If you are only looking to design a responsive website, Headless CMS may not be the ideal choice as it will slow down the implementation time.

• Headless CMS requires a high level of abstraction as it involves separating the content from your presentation level, which may be very difficult to implement.

• Being a SaaS cloud-based solution, Headless CMS may not fulfil most security and privacy requirements.

• Integrating third-party data and content sources into your content may be both challenging and time-consuming.

Conclusion

While the Headless CMS technology does have its benefits as compared to traditional CMS, business enterprises must evaluate its relevance and challenges for their content publishing.

Founded in the year 2003, Pennywise Solutions has successfully designed and delivered CMS solutions to international clients. Used across a wide range of industries, Enterprise CMS solutions from Pennywise has benefited customers in many ways, such as content authoring and reuse, content aggregation, and collaboration.