Headless CMSs are growing in popularity in the development world as a result of the flexibility that they offer. In this talk, I’ll give a brief introduction to the idea of headless CMSs, how we got here, what we can do with them, and the freedom that they might bring. All topped off with a simple look at Kentico Cloud in action.
5. Why do I care?
● Complete separation of content from presentation
● Freedom to innovate with content delivery
● Decouple your content and presentation
(1:30)
Headless CMSs are growing in popularity in the development world as a result of the flexibility that they offer. In this talk, I’ll give a brief introduction to the idea of headless CMSs, how we go here, what we can do with them, and the freedom that they might bring.
(2:30)
How we ended up here. From my view, there are some distinct periods in the history of the humble CMS.
What do we mean when we say ‘headless’?
Quick trundle through the Kentico Cloud experience.
(4:30)
How we got where we are:
Page generators. Anything goes really. Some tools out there that can visually edit HTML. Personal favourite of word documents with horrid macros.
Dynamic CMS. Things like MS CMS, blogger.com and livejournal.com are around as of ‘99. Vignette (super expensive, but actually from maybe ‘94). DNN in 2006, Joomla in 2005. Wordpress 2003
DX Platforms. A bit more fuzzy, but focussed on great digital experiences across multiple channels. Includes Liferay and OpenText, but also includes bespoke builds and enterprise CMS platforms.
Cloud first DX - i.e Headless CMS ...
(6:30)
Concentrate on creating content. Likeness to GatherContent for collating content before your application is designed.
Freedom to innovate with content delivery. We have the ability to flex with your team's skillset and newer technologies as the y arrive without compromising your content.
Decouple your content and presentation. When the content and presentation are too close, you typically find that you compromise your content to fit the presentation.
Multi-channel - natch
(7:30)
Responsive design
It will cope with as many screen variations as possible
Progressive enhancement
It will function no matter how much the client sucks
Accessibility
Anyone can use this regardless of ability
Headless CMS
Let people use this however they want
(9:00)
Contentful (2014)
Rich features, webhooks etc.
.NET SDK
First one I saw
Prismic (2013)
Pretty UI
Rich features, webhooks etc. but a bit more fiddley?
Fairly popular
.NET SDK in 2016
KenticoCloud (2016)
Simple UI
Core feature (webhooks and content API inbound)
Clear development path
(14:00)
Kentico Cloud App
Content types
Assets & media
Basic workflow
Inventory
Deliver & Personalisation
Code demo
Created from github
Command line is dotnet new kentico-cloud-mvc --name "dnosample" --output .
Create types CloudModelGenerator
Most things catered for as a starting point
KenticoCloudPreviewApiKey in project debug environment settings
KenticoCloudProjectId in appsettings.json
(15:00)
If you work with the web, go take a look at headless CMSs (obviously I’d recommend Kentico Cloud)
It can be a bit of a mind-shift to think of your content in isolation, but it’s very worthwhile experience
