Why go headless – a comperative study between traditional CMS and the emerging headless trend

Sammanfattning: There has been an exponential increase in the number of websites, digital channels and consequently digital content in the last years. Not only are the number of websites increasing but they are also becoming more complex, therefore it is no longer feasible to handle content and code with the same tools. Content Management Systems (CMS) are the solution to this problem and offers a way of managing content. The market today offers a broad variety of solutions that each have their own advantages, one of the more common being WYSWYG-functionality which often means that the functionality and the presentation of the content are tightly coupled. "Headless" CMS are a new way of doing things and offers the user a way of managing content without presenting them with a way of displaying the content. The different types of CMS present advantages and disadvantages from a user centred point of view as well as from a technical one. The thesis aims to explore these perspectives and form a hypothesis based on the studied cases. The study presents a set of aspects that based on the context in which the CMS is used and implemented can be perceived as either advantages or disadvantages. "Headless" CMS however shows a tendency to be the preferable choice where the editors have a technical background and the developing part values an agnostic approach when implementing a CMS, whereas a traditional CMS with WYSIWYG functionality tends to be more favourable where stability and editorial freedom are valued.