Content management is an important, primary business process that helps the organization establish its brand and build a relationship with the target group. The entire business benefits when companies can effectively inspire prospects and customers on all channels with their communication in a timely and targeted manner. The requirements for this are now incredibly complex. It therefore makes sense to rethink the software applications used and to take a closer look at current headless approaches.
The flexibility of a headless CMS makes sense in the long term, as the use of headless applications is generally a key criterion for implementing MACH architectures and composable business.See: Composable business and commerce powered by MACH architecture
Especially for current and future requirements, maintainability, performance, scalability and fast development phases with fewer resources are important criteria for your own competitiveness.
In this article, we would like to explain how Strapi creates advantages for a company for such requirements and convince you of the idea of using headless technologies for all new projects.
Our own requirements for the new CMS
For the new version of our own website, the question arose as to which system basis it should be implemented on. After all, from a marketing perspective, we don't just want new functions, improved user experience, a new design and more effective content provision. Programmers, platform operations, front-end developers and the design team also wanted to take new paths with fewer obstacles. We also want to consistently use and expand our modern infrastructures, development processes and cloud technologies for our own corporate communications.
The development department preferred the Strapi content management system because it offers the greatest possible flexibility, especially for developers. At the same time, it has only a few and marginal weaknesses compared to other headless CMS variants, such as "Contentful", "Sanity", "Hygraph", "Contentstack" or "Cockpit".
Even established enterprise CMS applications that support headless functions in new versions were not advantageous, as we implemented all frontend builds ourselves and we were aiming for a fast, resource-efficient project implementation with favorable licensing conditions. This is not to say that other headless solutions are worse. However, after careful examination, Strapi was the best fit for our needs.
We are currently using Strapi v3.6 with standard configurations. The site is served with Next.js. Next.js is an open source web development framework that is based on Node and enables React-based web application functions such as server-side rendering and the generation of static websites. It is hosted on AWS (Stage & Live), the database is a PostgreSQL. The automatic build & deploy process was implemented using Gitlab pipelines. An Nginx proxy is also used for the redirects. We are so convinced of Strapi that we are already offering this application in pitches as an interesting conceptual alternative to proposed and common CMS solutions. The positive feedback within customer projects proves us right.
What is Strapi?
Strapi is a headless CMS used to develop websites, mobile applications, e-commerce sites and APIs. It allows you to create an API without knowing anything about the backend or databases. The system automatically creates APIs based on pre-defined content models, making it easy to link data in the CMS to various frontends. Strapi focuses on being easy to develop, is open source and a free to use framework with various service level agreements and support – depending on your requirements.Strapi is a great tool for creating modern, fast APIs with real-time updates. It is free to use under the MIT license without any restrictions, which is very hard to find in today's market.
Strapi can be used with a variety of frontend technologies, such as React, Vue, Nuxt.js, Next.js, Angular, Svelte, Sapper and Flutter.
Screenshot Strapi Backend
Why headless CMS? A headless CMS strategy makes it easy to get new greenfield projects up and running and to use cloud technologies efficiently. For developers, headless is an El Dorado, as it offers complete flexibility to use any useful future technology without having to rewrite the entire code base. See: Headless CMS: No head, but brains
If you expand other business processes with the headless approach in addition to content management, the requirements for a composable business are met with each step. Companies can also gradually implement shop technologies headless and thus consistently embed all corporate communications, including e-commerce, in cloud technologies. Frontend and backend builds can be completely customized and tailored to a wide range of process and maintenance requirements. Editors are relieved of the burden and do not have to deal with technical difficulties or software configurations and programming in order to publish content. Time expenditure and sources of error are reduced to a minimum through optimal backend and frontend processes for maintenance and presentation. Designers and UX experts can now use new tools and technology combinations without the limitations of the past. Free from constraints, they can now develop their full creativity.
Strapi offers the greatest possible support and the fewest limitations, but solutions can be found for these. Minor disadvantages will also become obsolete in the foreseeable future, as Strapi has a lively developer community and publishes new stable versions every week.
The advantages of Strapi Headless CMS:
Simple data modeling:
- Amazing user interface for modeling data
- No need to create database tables or write queries
- Create any type of relational data with Strapi's admin user interface #### Authentication and authorization:
- Full control over who can use data using APIs.
- Differentiated access to fields within an entity or data point --> Roles and permissions #### Internationalization:
- Very good i18n support
- Provide translations for any data entity
- Content can be made available to a wider audience without much effort #### REST and GraphQL APIs:
- Ready-to-use, documented REST and GraphQL APIs
- Easily create entities in the Strapi admin and get Swagger/GraphQL documentation for free
- Write custom endpoints or make changes to existing ones and update the API documentation #### Easy customization:
- Easily add more API endpoints
- Write custom logic in models and controllers
- Provide authentication and authorization for custom endpoints
“Out of the Box”:
- Tagging, scheduled publishing, responsive preview and asset management
- Markdown editor, external data backups, filters and pagination, auditing and event logs
- OnPremise/Hybrid/Cloud hosting including plug-in store and custom plugins
- Standard user interface or own customizable, extensible author UI, customizable backend functions to implement your own business logic
- Modeling of data models via code and user interface
- WebHooks, CLI tool, integration of external APIs,
- Rest or GraphQL, SDKs for JavaScript/Node.js/ TypeScript
The disadvantages of Strapi Headless CMS:
- Limited database migration/seed support:
- Any kind of content type creation/update is handled by Strapi in the database
- Database migrations must be done manually across multiple environments
- Changed permissions are recorded in the database for an entity in an environment, but no migration files are generated
- Custom migration solutions are required
- Permission changes must be made manually Limited TypeScript support:
- When using TypeScript, an external package must be used to convert existing models to TypeScript code.
Who is Strapi suitable for?
Strapi's target group is primarily developers. Therefore, Strapi can only be used effectively with extensive knowledge of web development. There are no special integrated SEO tools, internal link management, workflow management tools for collaboration, calendar functions, comment functions, full-text searches, A/B tests or chatbots. Through in-house developments and user-defined plugins, you can create your own solutions tailored to your requirements - but professional developer support is required here. For laypeople, other headless CMS systems such as Ghost are certainly more helpful - but they are also nowhere near as flexible to use. Experienced service providers for implementation are therefore a must with Strapi.
Conclusion:
The slim Strapi can be used to implement medium-sized to very large and complex enterprise projects. Strapi is a best-of-breed solution for a wide range of challenges in corporate communications and content management. World-renowned customers and Strapi users such as IBM, Walmart, Toyota and NASA underline the possibility of using it for special enterprise requirements. If you also want to design a CMS and shop headless, contact us. We will be happy to help you and discuss a possible headless strategy with you.
