Headless CMSs separate content from presentation, giving front-end developers more flexibility. Instead of managing both content and layout in a traditional CMS like WordPress, a headless CMS stores content and exposes it via an API.

Popular options include:

• Contentful
• Sanity
• Strapi

These tools let non-developers manage content in a UI, while developers use the API to pull data into their apps.

Why use a headless CMS?

• Keep content editing and layout development independent
• Serve content via API to multiple channels (web, mobile, apps)
• Use your preferred frontend (React, Vue, Svelte, etc.)
• Better performance and scalability with static site generators

Example: Blog with Contentful + Next.js

We'll use Contentful as our CMS and Next.js as the front-end.

Step 1: Set up Contentful space

1. Create an account at Contentful
2. Create a new space
3. Add a content type “Post” with fields like:
   • title (Text)
   • slug (Text)
   • body (Rich Text)

Step 2: Add some content

Fill in a few blog posts using the Contentful UI.

Step 3: Connect Next.js to Contentful

Install the required packages:

npm install contentful

Create a helper to fetch data:

// lib/contentful.js
import { createClient } from 'contentful'

const client = createClient({
  space: process.env.CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID,
  accessToken: process.env.CONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN,
})

export async function getPosts() {
  const entries = await client.getEntries({ content_type: 'post' })
  return entries.items
}

Load data in your page:

// pages/index.js
import { getPosts } from '../lib/contentful'

export async function getStaticProps() {
  const posts = await getPosts()
  return { props: { posts } }
}

Step 4: Display the posts

export default function Home({ posts }) {
  return (
    <div>
      {posts.map((post) => (
        <article key={post.sys.id}>
          <h2>{post.fields.title}</h2>
        </article>
      ))}
    </div>
  )
}

Recap

Headless CMSs like Contentful let you:

• Store and manage structured content
• Serve that content via API
• Use it in any front-end framework

They're a great fit for JAMstack apps and give you full control over your UI while editors manage the content easily.