Headless CMS, anyone have experience with these?

[justoverclock]

i used to be really curious about the cms world, i like to play with new software, learning development around cms, forum etc…
And one of my future project could be a public api database (like rawg for videogames, imdb for movies and so on), so i’ve started to read about these “headless CMS”.

Now, i’m really new to these but i’ve started to play with Directus, and i’m about to play also with Strapi.

Now, these are really powerful cms, and anyone can build interesting project whit it, thats the reason i’m about to ask to all member theyr feedback…anyone use a headless cms like these?

what you think about it? there’s something better?

[phenomlab]

@justoverclock I personally haven’t looked at Directus, but it’s worth noting that Ghost is actually classed as headless in the sense that it is decoupled (FE and BE). WordPress and Drupal are classic examples of legacy CMS in the sense that the FE and BE (Front-End / Back-End) need to work together to deliver content.

The huge drawback of this is speed. WordPress, for example, relies on PHP to render content. Owing to the nature of PHP, this is much slower than STG (Static Site Generators) such as Ghost, GRAV, and the myriad of others using flat files for storage rather than a database. PHP is notoriously S L O W when it comes to content delivery, but has been the defacto standard for years.

That landscape is changing dramatically, and WordPress et al are on borrowed time (in my view) as the desire for a faster website and higher Google rankings become increasingly important.

[justoverclock]

@phenomlab true, i forgot to write all my intentions that are to deliver a public api that can be used from everyone, like rawg api, imdb api etc…

[phenomlab]

@justoverclock This is quite a task ! I’d love to see how you get on with that

[justoverclock]

@phenomlab said in Headless CMS, anyone have experience with these?:

This is quite a task ! I’d love to see how you get on with that

actually it works fine locally, i have a perfect setup that deliver an api with a fake products for now, so basically now i need only an idea because these api already exist for almost everything, games, books, audio etc…

thats the hard part

[phenomlab]

@justoverclock Impressive !!

[gotwf]

@phenomlab A couple comments…

Did you mean SSG, a.k.a. “Static Site Generator”? If so, I would not classify ghost as such since it is using nodejs and a backend database. Static sites are by definition stand alone. Static as in static HTML. More modern Web too oh, oh, oh! times they have extended to include various “interactive features”.

Yeah, PHP was big. But also was various java technologies being hosted on stuff like Tomcat and JBoss. Particularly in large enterprise environments. Another, with a bit of a different take, that I put to good use was Plone. Python and object oriented db, rather than relational. Ahead of it’s time. But like all software, had it’s warts and areas of compromise.

Ah… memory lane. Interesting to have lived in such interesting times, eh?

[phenomlab]

@gotwf said in Headless CMS, anyone have experience with these?:

Did you mean SSG, a.k.a. “Static Site Generator”? If so, I would not classify ghost as such since it is using nodejs and a backend database

Yes, you’re right - Ghost isn’t an SSG.

@gotwf said in Headless CMS, anyone have experience with these?:

being hosted on stuff like Tomcat and JBoss

Now there’s a technology (JBOSS) that I particularly loathe.

[gotwf]

@phenomlab I did not mind Tomcat. Kind of liked it. For the right jobs. Enterprise stuff so devs tended to be “serious” programmers. Not going to get the rapid dev cycle of PHP, but then also tended to not get nearly as much speghetti code either. Horses for courses.

[justoverclock]

@phenomlab yeah its a beautiful world, i’m trying to have some practice

https://rapidapi.com/user/justoverclockl

i’ve released two simple api for now, but i’m try to learn as much as i can