Multi-Site Management with Headless CMS: Benefits of Decoupled Architecture
According to WP Engine’s survey, 60% of enterprises use at least two CMSs. In other words, they manage more than one site.
Organizations need multiple websites for various reasons, from localizing content to specific countries to introducing new unique brands or product lines. Many have a broad audience they have to cater to, and having several resources helps them deliver personalized content for each target user group and market segment.
However, managing multiple websites with the “one CMS for one website” approach is inconvenient. Switching between different CMSs to update content on each site is time-consuming and daunting, each CMS has its own learning curve and requires specific skills to operate effectively, and when you rely on different platforms, it’s hard to provide a consistent digital experience across all your sites. Also, let’s not forget about maintenance and support costs, which in this case are astronomical.
Luckily, there is an easy way to solve this multi-site management problem. And the solution is a headless content management system. With a headless CMS, you can maintain multiple websites within a single platform, which is highly convenient and cost-effective.
As a company that’s been providing a wide range of CMS development services for a while, AnyforSoft wants to elaborate more on this topic and discuss the benefits of multi-site management with a headless approach.
Let’s dive right in!
What is Multi-Site Management with Headless CMS?
Multi-site management is when you manage two or more websites within a single CMS instead of having a separate CMS for every individual digital property. With this approach, you basically create a single infrastructure of code and content that your future sites will be able to use.
That means you don’t have to build the entire structure from scratch every time you launch a new website. Instead, you can reuse your core code and content for new websites. All you have to work on is the front end of the sites you launch—the back end will stay the same.
With a thought-out multi-site management strategy, you will be able to create new websites with less development effort, time, and costs. And, of course, maintenance costs will be much lower.
All of that can be implemented through headless content management systems (check out our article on headless Drupal to learn more).
What is headless CMS?
As you probably know, a traditional CMS consists of a front end and a back end. The back end stores, organizes, and manages content, while the front end renders content for users to view and interact with. Normally, when creating websites, developers use what is known as the traditional (or unified) approach in which the CMS is responsible for both the front end and the back end of the application.
When it comes to headless (or decoupled) architecture, the CMS’s front end is decoupled from its back end. Thus, the content management system is responsible for the back end only, whereas the front end is built with a separate framework (Vue.js, Angular, React.js, etc.). In this case, the CMS serves as a content repository that stores data and makes it available via APIs to the front-end systems of the developer’s choice.
Headless architecture gives more freedom to developers, as they’re not limited to the tools of a particular CMS and can use any front-end framework to create the visual part of the application.
