11th Sep 2023
What is a (headless) CMS?
Headless CMS? How can you have a Headless CMS? ... Like this!
Let's start at the start: What is a CMS?
A CMS, or Content Management System, is a system that lets you update the content* on your site without changing the actual code.
* Any text, images, videos, blog posts, news articles, etc
Wordpress, Shopify and SquareSpace, are some of the biggest names in Content Management Systems with Wordpress alone contributing to nearly half of all websites indexed by Google!
These systems allow you to, when properly set up (more on that in a mo!), update and add content to your website after it's live.
This is great for site owners who don't want to touch the code of their site, but still want the freedom and flexibility to not be completely stuck with a rigid, static site.
It also means that web developers have a much easier time updating websites instead of digging through code, they're able to easily update content in the CMS.
Makes sense, so what's a Headless CMS?
The word Headless refers to the system that holds your content not being the same as the system building or serving your website.
Wordpress, for example, typically requests your content and builds your website's pages every single time someone visits your site! Meaning that your website is only as fast as the server running it!
Now if you have a Headless CMS, your website gets built just once and then saved. Then every time a visitor comes to your site, they get a static, pre-built version of your site!
And depending on how often your content changes on your site, it means that your site only gets built once per content change - rather than literally on every page load!
Say if you only add one blog post per week, your site will only rebuild once per week. The rest of the time your visitors are served rapid, pre-built pages. Compare this to a typical CMS where each page is dynamically created every time someone loads your site.
So using a Headless CMS will make my site faster?
Yeah pretty much. Wordpress servers are much slower than serving static pages. Serving your users a static page will almost always be many times faster than even the fastest Wordpress servers.
And we know many web users will leave a site if it takes longer than two seconds to load. Every second counts when it comes to your website loading.
Time, in relation to web page loading times, is quite literally money.
What Headless CMS services are there?
There are many, many Headless CMS services offering many different things.
A few of the biggest names:
Huh? Wait, hold up. Wordpress actually offer a Headless mode too. Meaning if you currently use Wordpress you don't have to ditch it completely!
How does Bold use a Headless CMS?
Bold uses StoryBlok as it's main CMS of choice. StoryBlok has great flexibility, and it's super easy to use!
StoryBlok, along with Astro allows us to create beautiful, high-performant and useful websites without having to hardcode content into your site.
This means that we build sites with change and scale in mind. Your business doesn't stand still, so why should your website?
To wrap up
A CMS is a service that allows you to create platform content without having to write code!
A Headless CMS is simply a CMS that is completely separate to how your website is built. This allows your site to be built once and served continuously!
Thank you for reading all!
Jacob Jenkins - Founder