Webinar On Demand

How A Git-Based Headless CMS Solves The Challenges Of Traditional Database-Centric CMS Architectures

Recorded March 9, 2022

Join Us for a Complimentary Live Webinar Sponsored by CrafterCMS

Traditionally, content management systems (CMS) have been built atop SQL and NoSQL database backends. However, the primary functional capabilities of databases do not fully align with modern CMS requirements. For example, much of today’s digital content is file-based rather than the highly structured tabular data found in databases. Moreover, databases do not support sophisticated versioning, distributed and parallel multi-environment workflows, or branching, all of which are common CMS requirements for enterprise environments today. In addition, databases are difficult to scale, distribute and secure. These shortcomings are a major issue for building today’s dynamic, multi-channel, high-throughput digital experiences and the multi-disciplinary teams that manage them.

Git, the world’s leading system for source code management, has become increasingly popular for backing CMS solutions to manage and publish content. Unlike databases, Git was designed specifically to handle many of the gaps that databases produce when underpinning a CMS. 

We’ll explore the capabilities of Git and the many advantages Git brings as an alternative backend for CMS including the elimination of content freezes and other bottlenecks, auditing support, integration with CI/CD tools and processes, cloud-native elastic scalability, and the advantages of DevContentOps processes. We will review our specific design and implementation choices for CrafterCMS, an open-source, Git-based headless CMS that’s used by MasterCard, Marriott, Papa Johns, and many more major enterprises to run large-scale personalized websites, global intranets, e-commerce experiences, OTT video platforms, mobile apps, and other digital experiences.

You will learn:

  • Comparison of Git-based vs database-oriented CMS architectures
  • Review of various approaches to using Git for content management
  • How to improve developer and content publishing workflows with a Git-based headless CMS
  • Content API considerations (REST, GraphQL, and more)
  • Integration with CI/CD tooling and DevOps processes
  • Enterprise use cases and success stories

Speakers

Russ Danner, VP of Products, CrafterCMS

Russ Danner is VP of Products at CrafterCMS responsible for product management, product support, and overall success of enterprise clients, certified partners, and open source community members. He is also the co-founder of the open source CrafterCMS project. Russ brings 25 years of software architecture, design, and implementation experience. Prior to CrafterCMS, Russ was Web Experience Management Practice Director at Rivet Logic (now Capgemini) where he was responsible for CMS implementations at clients such as Citrix, Harvard, Mastercard, Marriott, and NFL.com. Prior to Rivet Logic, he was team lead for digital at the Christian Science Monitor.