CMS002: Contentful
Context
We are moving away from a Traditional or Coupled CMS to a Headless CMS. A Headless CMS is a subset of decoupled architecture as it does not have a defined front-end system or presentation environment. Because of this it gives us full flexability.
In this ADR we will cover Contentful and our decision for adopting it. Contentful works much like other CMSes. You upload your content (be it text, images, or video) to Contentful, and from there can organize and edit it as you desire. What sets Contentful apart from other CMSes is that it’s not page-based. In other CMSes, you adapt your content to the software. With Contentful, it’s the other way around. This concept is called content modeling.
Contentful is a headless content management developer platform with an API at its core.
Decision
API-first, not browser-first
All the created content is accessible via an API. Bring your content anywhere, display it as you like.
Manage all our content in one place
You can manage all your content with Contentful, no matter the format or channel. The key is to think of your content in terms of distribution and reuse, not in terms of format.
Some examples of where we can use our content created via Contentful:
- eCommerce Website
- Mobile application(s)
- Support portals or knowledge bases
- Design systems
Write once, reusue everywhere
The key feature of Contentful for content creators is its use of structured content. This means you can reuse content anywhere. For example, blog posts often have a short bio for their authors. These bios are reused over and over for each article the author posts. In Contentful, you can set this bio as a content type, and then link to it each time you create a new post for that particular author. Whenever you edit the bio content type in the future, your changes will be applied to every place the bio is used—no matter how long ago the post was published. This way, you write the bio itself once, but can both maintain it and reuse it over and over again, saving you time and effort.
Scalable cloud, not on-premises setup
Content is stored on contentful cloud servers. They are fast, safe, secure, and they take care of all the maintenance.
Content-centric, not page-centric
Organize and structure the content our way. Build a custom content model instead of dealing with fixed, predefined templates.
Just the content, no presets or templates
Contentful delivers the content, and we design around it. We separate the content from presentation — it's most flexible this way.
Consequences
- No built-in presentation functionality. But at Rapha this isn't something we would want.
- Difficult to see live previews. This is something we will need to plan for but can be overcome with development.
Summary
We have decided to continue to adopt Contentful as we have already successfully used it for projects such as Custom, About Page, Mobile Application(s).