What is a headless cms?
A headless platform like Coredna separates content management from front-end delivery, offering flexibility across any framework with a special focus on simplifying administration for marketers through a fully functioning DXP administration panel.
Unlike a traditional CMS/eCommerce, which combines content management and front-end delivery, a headless platform has a flexible front-end system to determine how the content is created and presented to the end user. It’s front-end agnostic, meaning that your content is created raw and can be published anywhere, through any framework, thanks to built-in APIs.
Coredna is not only a headless platform but also a hybrid headless Platform. We recognized that Marketers still need the flexibility of an easy to use administration, so we created a fully functioning DXP administration panel that allows the marketer to have a dashboard and the ability to manage multiple websites. With the Headless features of the Core dna DXP you can also create a customized publishing platform, this can be useful if you want to simplify administration functions or create a custom user experience.
Learn more about headless content management.
Related Questions
With Core dna you can launch your website and/or application in weeks, not months. We help you build complex, highly dynamic, and personalized websites rapidly.
With the API-first architecture, Core dna can integrate with all your existing tools: ERP, Marketing Stack, eCommerce solutions and more.
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With Core dna, you get a platform that balances marketing and IT needs. It has been developed to meet the demands of both developers and marketers. We work to provide developers the most flexible platform, while ensuring marketers have an intuitive interface for content editing and distributing and uses technology that enables the full control over digital assets.
Core dna native solutions without plugins or external apps help you build solutions with confidence. We make sure that you will never have to replatform. You will always stay ahead of your competition and get access to our advanced cloud platform that includes auto-scaling, caching, and global content delivery network (CDN). 26+ updates a year for patching, security updates, and new features - all driven by our customers.
Core dna provides top notch customer support with ongoing training programs to give your teams all the tools to succeed online. Core dna clients get a dedicated account and technical teams to support them.
Schedule a one-to-one consultation with your product specialist
Here’s what you can expect:
- Walkthrough: An introduction of the Core dna platform
- Analysis: Personalized recommendations based on your business needs.
- Case studies: How other businesses have used Core dna to scale more efficiently
To stay ahead of the curve in the fast-changing digital landscape, companies must have content management systems that are quick to adapt and scale efficiently. A headless platform separates your content backend from the frontend presentation layer opening up myriad possibilities for organizations’ digital experiences. This below we explain how adopting a headless architecture can change your digital business.
What is the technical architecture & integration
Microservices-Based Foundation
Headless platforms rely on microservices to provide higher speed and flexibility. They break down functionality into independent services that are then combined to create a complete solution. Organizations can scale specific components as needed without affecting the entire system. For instance, during peak sales periods, an e-commerce company may increase its product catalog service while maintaining normal capacity for its blog content service.
An approach based on APIs
All platform functionality is made available through well-documented APIs. This allowes:
- Smooth integration into already existing systems
- Simple swapping of individual parts
- Unvarying data access across all channels
This is a real-life example: The Core dna platform has helped nutritional supplement giant, Standard Process, rewrite the way they engaged with their customers. Read more about the standard process implementation
Ways of Increasing Growth
Rapid Development Cycles
Developers can use the tools and frameworks they were already using, making them a better choice than custom legacy CMS systems for:
- Faster introduction of new team members
- Less time taken to develop new features
- Increased flexibility in the solutions
- Smaller technology debt
Freedom to Personalize Interfaces
This way you can achieve:
- Same brand experience across all touchpoints;
- Workflows that are optimized for specific users;
- Rapid prototyping and iteration.
Image Management Excellence
Single Source Content Repository
It also makes sure there is no content redundancy between systems, inconsistent messaging, or version control issues:
- Copying content in multiple places with different addresses;
- Ineffective communication due to some errors in the initial versions.
Specific Content Models
Developers can include:
- Defining types’ relationships;
- Adding custom fields along with validation rules;
- Developing content hierarchies that mimic business process.
Security & Efficiency
Optimized Delivery of Content
Decoupled architecture allows for:
- Server workloads reduced by efficient API calls,
- Channel specific content delivery,
- Caching strategies improved for faster performance.
Advanced Security Measures
These include:
- Controlled API access at a granular level.
- Separation between presentation and content layers.
- Protective surfaces decreased by custom endpoints
Headless platform implementation process
- Evaluate existing content architecture
- Locate main integration areas
- Select a headless solution that satisfies your requirements
- Arrange for your content to be transferred in an orderly manner.
Important considerations for implementation are:
- Begin with one pilot project
- Ensure the APIs are well documented and developers are familiar with the framework
- Ensure proper governance of the content modelling
- Evaluate how this will affect the work flows of your marketing team
Further resources
- Comprehensive Overview
- Headless eCommerce Guide
- Future of CMS and eCommerce
- Headless vs Hybrid Platform Classification
- Headless CMS Fundamentals
- eCommerce: Headless vs Traditional Comparison
- Headless CMS Benefits and Use Cases
By adopting a headless platform, organizations gain the flexibility to adapt quickly to changing digital requirements while maintaining robust content management capabilities. The initial investment in restructuring your content architecture pays dividends through improved development efficiency, better performance, and enhanced security.
Whether you're a developer seeking technical flexibility, a content manager looking for better workflows, or a business leader focused on digital transformation, headless platforms offer compelling benefits that can drive your organization forward.
Read this next: Headless CMS vs Decoupled CMS: The Ultimate Guide
There are a number of differences between headless and decoupled platforms; these include:
- Flexible content models that allow you to describe your data in the headless platforms.
- Advanced APIs that can use query languages for APIs like GraphQL.
- Headless platforms are designed to deliver content quickly and efficiently without any overhead.
- Decoupled platforms are generally connected to a display layer templating language for building user interfaces.
- Headless platforms may not have any display of layer templating. Hybrid platforms like Core dna do still offer templating languages and admin interfaces for the convenience of admins.
- A high degree of customization & flexibility for developers in the headless platform.
This depends on the traditional platform. With a headless CMS, the key difference is its ability to create different content types and then make that content available through an application programming interface (API).
If a traditional CMS is able to process API requests it can be integrated with a headless platform. If it's not then programmers will need to process the API requests outside of the traditional CMS, through the use of javascript in the display of the website.
Understanding what a traditional CMS is
A monolithic or traditional cms is a content management system that stores all of its content in a single database. This means that all of your content, including pages, posts, comments, and media, are stored in one place. A monolithic cms is best suited for small websites with relatively simple content structures. If you have a large website with complex content, you may want to consider a different type of content management system.
Understanding what a headless CMS is
A Headless Content Management System (CMS) enables users to manage and store content without the need for a graphical user interface (GUI). A headless CMS is often used in conjunction with a “front-end” website or application that provides a GUI for end users.
You can learn more about headless vs monolithic in this guide:
- What is a headless CMS
- The difference between headless vs traditional CMS
- What is a decoupled CMS
- Headless vs decoupled CMS
- Things to consider when choosing a headless CMS
- Headless CMS case studies
Schedule a one-to-one consultation with your product specialist
Here’s what you can expect:
- Walkthrough: An introduction of the Core dna platform
- Analysis: Personalized recommendations based on your business needs.
- Case studies: How other businesses have used Core dna to scale more efficiently
The easiest way to determine if a headless platform is best for you is to ask yourself these questions:
- What are your business requirements and does a headless platform solve these requirements?
- Do you have access to qualified individuals to help with the setup and ongoing management of the platform?
- Can you determine the content types that you will require (e.g. buttons, headers, lists, options, etc.)?
- Do you want to design your own components using the content types you can define? You can always add components later but planning up front will help with organizing your content for distribution.
- Determine if you want to enrich your content with templates and styling to create consistent output and not just data.
- Do you want to test the output from the headless platform using tools that allow you to make API calls?
- Do you want to configure the destination systems to accept the information?
In the case of Core dna, we provide an admin panel to help with the creation of the content and preview of the content. We also give you a number of tools for security and personalization. Finally, we have defined a number of entities that give you the starting point for your project to help with quick deployment.
Read this next: How to Choose The Best CMS Platform to Help Drive Your Business Growth
Core dna is framework agnostic.
An agnostic framework means you can create any design using the front-end technology and frameworks that you know and love.
We believe in being open-minded and non-discriminatory when it comes to technology choices, and we want our clients to feel empowered to use whatever works best for them and their projects, regardless of whether it's something we've already tried and failed with before!
Core dna never requires you to use specific templates or libraries. As a decoupled platform, Core dna also has server side templating that can be used to deliver projects quickly and efficiently using only HTML, CSS and Javascript. The server side frameworks supported are Twig and Smarty.
What is an agnostic framework?
An approach to software development that doesn't favor any one language or technology over another. Agnosticism is a philosophical position which states that it is not possible to know anything about God or other supernatural beings. A Software Agnostic approach would say that there is no right or wrong when it comes to the tools you use in your job as long as they get the job done.
What is Smarty?
Smarty is a template engine for PHP. More specifically, it facilitates a manageable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation. This is best described in a situation where the application programmer and the template designer play different roles, or in most cases are not the same person. It is extremely fast. It is efficient since the PHP parser does the dirty work. No template parsing overhead, only compiles once.
What is Twig?
Twig is a modern template engine for PHP. It's fast. Twig compiles templates down to plain optimized PHP code. The overhead compared to regular PHP code was reduced to the very minimum. It is secure. Twig has a sandbox mode to evaluate untrusted template code. This allows Twig to be used as a template language for applications where users may modify the template design. It is flexible. Twig is powered by a flexible lexer and parser. This allows the developer to define its own custom tags and filters, and create its own DSL.
What is a decoupled platform?
A decoupled platform is a software architecture where components are independent of each other. This allows for easier development, testing, and maintenance of the individual pieces that make up the whole product or system.
Decoupled platform advantages:
A decoupled platform will allow your software to be more easily scalable and upgradable as new technologies become available. It also means your developers won't have to worry about updating multiple parts of your application every time there's an update released; they'll just need to update one piece at a time!
Schedule a one-to-one consultation with your product specialist
Here’s what you can expect:
- Walkthrough: An introduction of the Core dna platform
- Analysis: Personalized recommendations based on your business needs.
- Case studies: How other businesses have used Core dna to scale more efficiently
There are a number of differences between Monolithic systems and a Headless system, these include:
- Monolithic systems have lots of functionality built into them that not all customers need.
- A headless platform gives you access to entities, examples of these are pages, menus, products, blogs, people, etc. Entities are the base objects that you can then modify and enhance to your requirements.
- Monolithic systems are more focused on delivering solutions to the end client rather than the developer. Core dna’s platform strikes a balance between the developer environment and the admin environment.
- Headless platforms in many cases don’t come with admin tools for end clients. Core dna continues to provide admin friendly tools inside our headless platform.
- Access to information from a monolithic system can be difficult.
- Monolithic systems require you to establish the infrastructure and the security tools to make them work.
- Monolithic systems can take time to learn and understand the way they work.
- Headless platforms allow you to create your own publishing environments.
Read this next: Headless CMS vs Decoupled CMS: The Ultimate Guide
You sure can. Global brands trust Core dna to build and operate eCommerce websites in multiple regions and continents. Our eCommerce feature set includes everything from inventory management to detailed analytics.
See Core dna’s eCommerce features.
Core dna was launched in 2015, but our team was operating as a digital agency since the year 2000, building, tweaking and using Core dna for our clients as we grew.
Core dna is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform, meaning you’ll be charged a monthly subscription fee, with none of the headaches of hosting or maintaining the infrastructure.
Of course! We pride ourselves on being more than just a software vendor. We partner with brands and agencies by providing technical support, digital strategy consulting and more. Core dna originated from an agency and has the professionals to provide insights into the platform, help with the strategy, implementation of the platform and the experts to help with solving onboarding and ongoing questions.
A DXP or Digital experience platform is a central technogical foundation to be built upon and to support the entire, continuous customer life cycle across all digital channels.
- From one platform, one login, brands and business can manage content, assets, and interactions across multiple different channels.
- It allows multichannel delivery via APIs of digital interactions across all touchpoints, including Iot, AR/VR, digital assistants and kiosks.
- It helps efficiently and effectively create, store, publish and optimize content for any channel – whether it’s a website,
mobile app, or social media page. - It's a platform where business and IT with various skills and responsibilities work together towards the common goal of customer experience improvement.
- It helps tracks user behavior on your websites, monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time.
- It integrates with your tech stack for increased personalization and engagement with customers, and gather
customer insights from data analytics. - Here is how claude ai thinks of the Core dna DXP platform
Gartner defines a digital experience platform (DXP) as, “an integrated set of technologies, based on a common platform, that provides a broad range of audiences with consistent, secure and personalized access to information and applications across many digital touchpoints. Organizations use DXPs to build, deploy and continually improve websites, portals, mobile and other digital experiences.”
An enterprise DXP gives a brand the tools it needs to manage the presentation layer of their digital presence. All great DXPs combine integration and aggregation, content management, personalization, collaboration, workflow management, analytics, multichannel support as well as search and navigation.
Yes, you can use APIs to deliver content to any channel or device, and to connect with any third-party platform.
Pros
- Flexible developer environment to create and manage content across multiple channels
- Ability to create and deploy tailored customer experiences quickly
- Ability to learn, change and iterate direction quickly
- Share content programmatically with other systems
- Create workflows and recurring processes that communicate with the platform and other systems
- Advanced security provided by simple interactions through APIs
- Improved performance, ability to create static content and have websites that are fast
- Scale, ability to handle peaks and large volumes of website content from a single source
Cons
- Have flexibility that may require developer involvement
- Manual application management
- Out-of-the-box functionality may be limited
- Flexibility in the presentation layer can be limited
- Setup maybe be more complex in terms of structuring data types, components and layouts
- Some systems are missing admin/authoring capabilities with features like preview, analytics and permissioning
- Site control can be split amongst a number of content systems
- Personalization may require more development
- Analytics capabilities can be limited
** Many of the Cons above have been solved within the Core dna platform as we continue to provide hybrid support for the traditional authoring environment.
Read this next: Hybrid CMS: A Headless CMS, But With a Front-End
Core dna is a decoupled platform, meaning we have headless content management built-in, but we also give you the front-end tools you need to present your content to your end-user.
Yes. Core dna can build intranets and social communities for professionals that enhance communication and collaboration.
See Core dna’s digital workplace features.
Thanks to Core dna’s decoupled nature, paired with our microservice architecture, our DXP is ready for anything. If your content is managed by Core dna, you’ll always be able to deliver it to any new device that emerges on the market.
Yes. Microservice architecture helps us scale, which helps our clients scale. Plus, it means we can give each client the exact tools they need without burdening them with superfluous features.