Using Headless CMS - Kentico Cloud for Website Development

Content sells! Yes, it is true, today, Content has become a new choice for companies wanting to improve customer experience. Storytelling is gaining more traction and so is content marketing. Organizations are producing large amounts of data and content, but a pile of data is of no use. CMSs act as a key enabler for managing large quantity of content and offer a seamless digital experience to customers. Having a responsive website is just no longer enough. Your audiences expect a seamless and personalized customer experience across all the various devices they use to reach you. Earlier content management was only about the management of files and content assets, but the modern day web and enterprise CMSs offer organizations the flexibility to use CMS for consumer-facing interactions. It is time that organizations move towards using headless CMS and Kentico Cloud would be the best choice for website development. 

What is a Headless CMS?

Headless CMS is a content management system that lets you to manage content and access it from your applications using an application programming interface (API). A headless CMS comprises primarily of an API along with a backend technology necessary to store and deliver content. The headless approach enables developers to offer content as a service (CaaS), which purely means that content storage and delivery are handled by separate software. Key features of a Headless CMS are -

• Content storage 
• A UI that allows you to Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) content.
• Web apps to design the website and display the content as HTML pages (the front-end).

Developing a website using Headless CMS can be easy

1. Getting Developers 

Inclusion of several products into a single Kentico Cloud is a big start. You can start with UX testing based on some wireframes and at the same time write all the content in Kentico Cloud. The biggest challenge, which you may face, is finding developers in such a short time frame for redesigning the website. Hiring a skilled Kentico, front-end developers with good knowledge of Kentico serve a great purpose.

Build a team of expert and skillful Kentico developers who are experienced in converting the HTML prototype into an ASP.NET MVC application. This will help in dynamically recovering the content from Kentico Cloud.

2. Flexible Project Planning

Project planning allows better decision-making on roles and helps in working more independently. Decide upon project timeline, allocation of the time and a variety of tasks. This helps in easier outsourcing of projects and resource allocation with flexible time frame. While we evaluate Headless CMS with that of traditional CMS implementation, content preparation in Headless CMS can be done at once instead of waiting for the whole website to be developed and then updating the same.

3. Proper Content Strategy

Traditional CMS will not allow you to build quality content strategy as the content is mixed with the presentation; therefore, it cannot be reused in other channels. This is particularly when you decide to redesign your website. Moreover, it could be an option that you build the site first and then write the content into the templates. However, with headless CMS model, content is given the first preference. You can start creating the content first before you actually start writing the code. Content can later be divided into reusable components. The features of the product are accumulated in modular content in features element.

4. Minimum Knowledge necessary for Front-end Developers

Well, front-end developers find complexity in working with traditional CMS and spend a lot of time struggling with its restrictions. However, headless CMS comes to rescue as Developers can easily work with headless CMS by merely following best practices and standards. Once they finish the task, they can just hand over the static files to back-end developers. This signifies that front-end developers need not be familiar with the given CMS.

5. Back-end Development

Back-end development is not a tiresome task with headless CMS. Convert HTML prototype into Razor views use ASP.NET MVC. Now add controllers, which call the Content Delivery APl. Use .Net SDK to recover content from Kentico Cloud. Its development is actually easy and once you are familiar with the API, you simply have to write code.

6. Going Cloud-first

With conventional CMS, developers used to spend loads of time in installing the CMS and environment configuration that involved web servers and databases. The website code is trivial as it only calls the Content Delivery API and displays the content. This means the site doesn't require any complex infrastructure or database, hence no need to get into the coding of CMS. For running a site, you can use Microsoft Azure Web Application. No system administrators are necessary and you just have to deploy the code. Because headless CMS carries content through API, which authenticates that it can deliver the content anywhere and on any device. This is great news for mobile app developers as the same backend sends the content to an iOS app or Android App. Headless CMS is remarkable for cross-platform content publishing and offers best customer experiences.

Known for its perceptive UI, Kentico Cloud is ultimate for headless beginners and experts a like. If you are constantly generating new content for many users, Kentico CMS is the best choice as you can produce all of your structure content in one place. Once your content is ready to be published, you can either push it towards your existing CMS or use their API to publish content straight away on your website or app. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a headless CMS option with a number of built-in modules, Kentico Cloud proves to be the best choice for you.

About Raybiztech

Raybiztech is a leading Global Information Technology (IT) Services and Solutions, a CMMI Level 3, ISO 27001:2022 Certified Company. We are a Member of NASSCOM, HYSEA, NJTC, and AIIA. Raybiztech offers comprehensive end-to-end IT Services for Business Application Development, Enterprise Solutions, Enterprise Collaboration Services, Testing and Quality Assurance Services, Cloud Computing and IT Infrastructure Management to organizations in the Banking & Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, Media & Entertainment, Leisure & Travel, Telecom and Energy & Utilities verticals as well as Independent Software Vendors.