Do You Still Use WordPress, Think Again
by İsmail Arılık, Software Engineer
1. Headless
Headless content management systems emerged as an alternative to legacy monolithic systems. Their main advantages are their greater lightness and flexibility. Monolithic systems like WordPress are complex due to their legacy codebase and the combined backend and frontend nature, making them unable to meet new design and functionality needs.
In headless systems, the frontend and backend are separate. This allows for easy design changes to be made to the frontend. Changes to the database and business logic in the backend can also be made without affecting the frontend. This separation of the front and back also allows for more secure and error-free applications.
2. Lightweight
Headless content management systems are lightweight because the database and business logic are clearly separated from the design and user interface. The backend, which houses the business logic, and the frontend, which houses the user interface, communicate with each other via a simple messaging protocol. Developments and fixes on either side can be made without affecting the other. All of this allows for a simpler, and therefore lighter, structure.
A lightweight architecture also means lower server costs because it uses fewer processors, memory, and network resources. In most cases, you run only the backend on the server and keep the frontend compiled (minified) on free content delivery networks.
Top tip
Lightweight often also means speed; separate frontend and backend pages can be more easily optimized for speed. Speed is a crucial criterion in SEO (search engine optimization); search engines don't like to wait while indexing pages and may index faster pages with a higher score.
3. Customization
Headless content management systems are easily customizable. The backend database schema can be designed as desired. Any workflow can be applied to this schema. The data generated from this workflow can be presented in any format, whether to a web application or a mobile application. Creating a user interface with this data is limited only by imagination.
This flexibility of headless systems has enabled them to be used not only for simple websites like blogs but also for much more complex web applications like e-commerce.
You can find a high-quality case study on this here. A live example of this work is available here: https://cms.ismailarilik.com