If you have looked at the source code repository for this site, you may notice that this site stores blog posts as MDX files in the posts directory. Why did I not use a Content Management System (CMS)?

WordPress is still the most popular CMS in the world, and is currently used in 60% of the world’s websites. WordPress is a traditional CMS that combines the content and presentation layers of a website.

Recently, the concept of a “headless” CMS has become popular. A headless CMS focuses on storing and managing content, but lets you define the front end for presenting the content yourself. Typically, you interact with a headless CMS via an API, but some headless CMS are not truly “headless” but has a frontend that you may optionally use. Indeed, WordPress could be used as a headless CMS because it has a REST API that can be consumed.

There are many headless CMS options to choose from. It’s a hot area of innovation, and I’ve lost count as there seems to be a new one every few days or so. For example, there is a list at the Jamstack site which I know is incomplete.

Many of the newer ones are cloud based, which means they won’t be free forever, but some allow you to self host. There are even some, like NetlifyCMS and TinaCMS that allows you to continue to use flat files stored in a repository (such as this site) to store content. Most are also open source, but not all (especially not the commercial cloud based options).

So, given the choice, why did I choose not to build this website using a headless CMS on day one.

Part of the reason is a desire not to be locked into a solution too early. I want some time to explore the various options, and they all involve a learning curve. Secondly, I wanted the site not to rely on any external services just yet.

There is a simplicity and a sense of freedom from just storing everything in a Github repository for the time being. My current requirements are very simple and I don’t immediately need all the advanced features like role access, version control (although this is provided by Github anyway), custom post types, image management etc.

I also like just typing in blog posts directly into Markdown from Visual Studio Code, and I find I am a lot more productive in a familiar environment.

Eventually, I’ll need the more advanced features (especially image and gallery management), so stay tuned as things may change!