In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about headless CMSs - why to use them, how they work, pros and cons, examples and more!
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Show Notes
2:11 - What is a headless CMS?
- It’s a system or CMS that has no front-end (aka head)
- Allows you to use front-end specific tech (static generators/front-end frameworks) instead of the back-end to generate pages
4:37 - Some examples
- Can be used with any type of website that can consume an API
- WordPress API + Gatsby
- Hosted Service + React App
7:06 - Why?
- Separation of concerns - your data is in a single spot, and can be pulled into any app, website, marketing micro site, etc.
- Keeps ergonomics of WordPress or $CMSHERE, while developers get to use what they like
- Optimizes for performance with static builds
- Hide the implementation details and back-end from view
10:19 - Live vs statically-generated website
10:55 - How?
- Connects to API via normal fetch calls/GraphQL/whatever you use
- Needs to host your back-end either as a service or on a host
- Needs to host your front-end either on the same server as your back-end or on something specialized like Netlify
Links
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