SHCDAS: Headless Content Delivery

This blog post is part of the SaaS Headless Content Delivery Architectures Series (SHCDAS).

Headless CMS vendors do not provide content delivery toolsets. Headless CMS products focus on services shared to all delivery channels, whether custom build processes, Software Development Kits (SDKs) for specific platform technologies, or otherwise. Headless CMS vendors provide integrations with mainstream static site generators such as gatbsy. The CMS UI, customer solution build processes, SDKs, and any other access to the CMS depends on hosted HTTPS service endpoints that expose content management and content delivery functionality.  Services are available to build and deployment processes, application servers running in the content delivery tier, visitors accessing the deployed solution from the Internet, and any other application that can process JSON received over HTTPS.

An important distinction between headless and traditional CMS is that traditional CMS typically provide content delivery toolsets native to individual technology platforms, while headless CMS solutions provide SDKs for multiple technology platforms that primarily wrap HTTPS service endpoints. Headless CMS solutions rely on a single set of HTTPS services regardless of the technologies, hosting platforms, and other systems chosen for each phase of site management (build, deploy, serve, and process).