Why your next Umbraco project should be Headless
7. march 2018
| Jeppe
The biggest topic for this year's Umbraco Codegarden18 at the end of May is expected to be Headless Umbraco. We have just upgraded our internal baseline to Headless / .NET Core and will describe the main points for why you should consider Headless architecture for your next Umbraco project.
New technology, a faster solution and easier upgrade
A Headless CMS project means. that the classic dependency between the CMS platform and the presentation layer have been removed. This means in practice that front-end is physically separate from the back-end, and you can therefore develop the presentation layer independently of the CMS platform version. It provides a number of built-in benefits in terms of utilizing new technologies. A CMS platform will always be behind in relation to technology compared to the framework because; first a framework (eg. MVC or .NET Core) is released and only then can all the products based on the technology be adapted.
That means by basing a project on Headless, it is possible to create .NET core projects with Angular2 which otherwise would not be possible with a classic CMS setup. With the expectancy of the Umbraco 8 release in the near future, it will be much easier to upgrade as well since only the CMS part will be needing an upgrade, not the web presentation layer.
A scalable solution
For the performance part, it allows for easy add-on of front-end servers, which can handle much larger solutions with load balancing - and even if the front-end should hit peak load, it will not affect the webmaster's work in the back-end, since It can be placed on a separate server instance.
It will also be possible to make a completely different front-end in any other programming language, since there is no direct link between the CMS and the implemented solution.
Disadvantages of Headless
There will always be arguments for and against a new technology trend. One can say the argument against Headless is the extra complexity that must necessarily be added to have a separate structure. Therefore, it will take work and effort to make the first solution Headless - but once the baseline is made as Headless, there will not be much overhead.
We have chosen to make all new projects like Headless as it both provides a more modern solution, developer satisfaction as they can use the latest technologies, and finally because it becomes a more secure and fast solution with greater flexibility.
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