Glossary
Headless CMS
A content management system that exposes content via APIs only, leaving the front-end unconstrained.
Definition
A headless CMS stores and models content but does not render it — content is exposed via REST or GraphQL APIs and consumed by any front-end. Sanity, Contentful, Storyblok, Strapi, Payload and Hygraph are common choices. Headless is the dominant pattern for modern marketing sites and e-commerce storefronts because it lets the front-end be Next.js while editors keep an editor-friendly authoring tool.
Why it matters
Headless CMS is what unlocks Lighthouse-92+ marketing sites without giving up editor experience. The wrong CMS choice can lock you into structures that hurt for years; the right one is invisible.
See also
Next.js
Next.js development company — App Router, RSC, SSG/ISR, edge runtime. Storefronts lifted from Lighthouse 42 to 94 on Next.js 14 in production.
Read →SSR vs SSG vs ISR
Three rendering strategies: server-rendered on each request (SSR), pre-rendered at build (SSG), or pre-rendered and revalidated (ISR).
Read →Working on Headless CMS?
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