Tos Web Developer - Drupal Developer And Web Developer Helping Blog

What is headless Drupal?

Headless Drupal (also know as decoupled Drupal) is a new way to develop and deliver websites.

Traditional CMS website models use PHP rendering to deliver website content through a user’s browser.

Headless Drupal instead allows content to be delivered to users through a separate front-end application. This means that a Drupal instance does not decide on the styling for a website. Rather, a separate application decides how data from the Drupal instance is displayed. This allows for an added layer of functionality and customization. In the example below, that application runs on ReactJS.

What this front-end application runs on is different depending on the developer.  We’ve displayed ReactJS above as it is currently one of the preferred technologies for headless implementations.

What are the benefits of headless Drupal?

• Future proofs your site

As new technologies and designs come out (whether compatible with standard Drupal or not), only the frontend would need to be re-programmed, whilst the backend with it's logic and content management can be left untouched. Furthermore, headless allows developers to implement multiple frontends, achieving responsive design easily ie: the SAME information can be displayed in UNIQUE WAYS on a desktop, widget, mobile or app.

• Speeds up your site

A lot of the limitations of Drupal’s own frontend architecture are eliminated with the use of JavaScript frameworks, which are speedy and easy to use. These frameworks deliver API calls from Drupal to HTML, focusing only on content delivery itself, hence the entire site gets faster.

• Improves site security

As content is created through one system and delivered to the user through another, system administrators can easily limit access to various areas of the infrastructure, resulting in improved system security.

• Developer experience

Headless Drupal allows teams with different specializations to work in parallel on different components of implementation without hindering or delaying the other’s work or compromising the project’s integrity.