FrontAid CMS - Agile Content Management with JSON & Git.

Is FrontAid CMS a Headless CMS?

Headless Content Management Systems are taking off in the whole Web industry. And even the largest CMS providers are trying to upgrade their products to be Headless. It really has become a huge trend. In this post we will have a look at what Headless CMS actually are and whether FrontAid is a Headless CMS. (Hint: Yes and no.)

What is a Headless CMS?

There is no universally accepted definition of the term “Headless CMS”. But most definitions agree on the fact that Headless CMS focus on the Content Management and not on the Content Representation (i.e. the “Head”). But some some descriptions go much further than that. For example the Wikipedia article about Headless content management system.

A headless content management system, or headless CMS, is a back-end only content management system (CMS) built from the ground up as a content repository that makes content accessible via an API for display on any device. The term “headless” comes from the concept of chopping the “head” (the front end, i.e. the website) off the “body” (the back end, i.e. the content repository).

Their definition also mentions an API to access the content. Though, that does not necessarily mean it has to be a Web API—for example REST or GraphQL—like the ones that most Headless CMS are using.

Is FrontAid CMS a Headless CMS?

So is FrontAid a Headless CMS? FrontAid is a backend-only CMS that acts as a content repository and does not do any content representation whatsoever. But unlike other (more traditional) Headless CMS, FrontAid does not offer an extensive API for content retrieval and filtering. It does only give you a a JSON file that contains all your content.

FrontAid CMS thus shares the main characteristic that differentiates it from the traditional CMS; it is “headless”. It also provides a—very naive—application programming interface (API) to the content; it emits content in a standard data format that you can access and manipulate yourself.

While FrontAid takes a very different approach than most other Headless CMS, it is by itself also a Headless Content Management System. It allows you to read its content from a JSON file which—according to your own definition of “API”—might or might not comply with a specific definition of a Headless CMS.

FrontAid is a CMS that is headless, it is a Headless CMS.