First Impressions of the Universal CMS

Coined by Preston So, the term "Universal CMS" describes a new paradigm in content management systems. 

The Universal CMS empowers content and marketing teams, typically with no technical skills, to have the same control and management over the CMS as they do with monolithic or traditional CMSs. Simultaneously, it allows developers and website builders to leverage a universal developer experience, enabling them to use any technology or stack with total flexibility.

In this article, we share our initial thoughts on this concept, where we believe the CMS industry is headed, and our contributions to this evolving space within Drupal.

What Is the Universal CMS and Why Is It Important?

The emergence of the Universal CMS is a response to the rapid changes in the technology and content creation industries. 

Over the last decade, the proliferation of different content channels, from voice assistants to AI chatbots, has reshaped the landscape. 

At the same time, the resurgence of programming languages like JavaScript has driven the creation of today’s digital experiences, allowing programmers to find diverse solutions to past and new challenges.

As Preston explains, these two centrifugal forces have caused fragmentation in the CMS industry, manifesting in two key players: headless CMS and hybrid-headless CMS. The former is usually preferred by developers, while the latter caters more to marketers, as each type addresses their specific needs for control and management.

However, as the industry continues to evolve, both types of CMSs have been adding features to attract users to address both sets of needs: primarily, visual editing features for headless CMS and more robust and improved SDKs, CLIs, and other developer’s tools for hybrid-headless CMS.

The concept of a Universal CMS then emerges as a platform designed with both personas in mind from the start, aiming to be an example of where the industry is heading.

However, the objective of these changes is the same: delivering a better user experience to the teams working directly with these technologies. With that in mind, let’s do a quick review of the current CMS options today.

Developer Experience vs Editorial Experience in the CMS Industry

In the early days of the CMS, the editorial and developer experiences were much simpler than they are today. 

By the 2020s, technology has undergone a series of changes that have significantly altered the expectations of marketing teams and developers alike.

On one side, the omni-channel explosion has heightened content expectations from audiences. In consequence, this has pressured marketing and content teams to maintain quality consistency, originality, and cadence across more platforms and amidst increasing competition.

On the other hand, the technologies required to manage this content explosion have evolved. With languages and tech stacks becoming more diverse and continuously growing, developers have sought ways to customize their experience according to their specific tools and methodologies.

This has led to the perception of a divide between marketing and development teams using CMSs, with each side sometimes feeling “betrayed” by their chosen CMS.

That’s why a comprehensive solution that can address the needs of most content and developer teams alike is crucial, while also providing specific solutions for specific users and websites.

It’s important to understand what each of them offers and why, for some organizations, it is the right choice or not, which we’ll explain in the next section.

Headless vs. Hybrid vs. Universal CMS: Solutions to the Same Problem?

The CMS landscape has seen significant growth and diversification in response to changing market demands, technological possibilities, and the varying priorities of different teams. 

Like Preston, we believe in balancing the needs of both marketing and development teams. However, it is crucial to create specific solutions for custom cases.

We’ve been working on that for Drupal with Drupal Composable. But first, let's dive into some concepts:

Headless CMS

A headless CMS decouples the content management backend from the frontend presentation layer. This separation allows developers to choose their preferred technologies for building the frontend, while the content remains centralized and accessible through APIs.

• Flexibility for Developers: Developers can use any frontend framework or technology stack, tailoring the user experience to the project's specific needs. Updating or changing the frontend technology does not affect the backend.
• Challenges for Non-Technical Users: Non-technical users, such as marketers, may find it challenging to visualize content without a built-in preview feature, requiring skilled developers to bridge the gap between backend and frontend.

Read our article “Headless CMS vs Traditional CMS” to learn more about the key characteristics of these platforms.

Hybrid-Headless CMS

A hybrid-headless CMS combines the best of traditional and headless CMS approaches. It offers a decoupled architecture with the option to use pre-built templates and components, making it easier for both developers and marketers to work together.

• Developer Flexibility and Marketer Ease: A hybrid-headless CMS combines the best of traditional and headless CMS approaches. It offers a decoupled architecture with pre-built templates and components, facilitating collaboration between developers and marketers. 
• Balancing Complexity: Non-technical users can manage content without deep technical knowledge, using a wide range of data input fields from simple text fields to WYSIWYG user-friendly interfaces. This approach simplifies many processes but still requires custom development to fully leverage hybrid capabilities.

Universal CMS

A Universal CMS aims to be a one-size-fits-all solution that addresses the needs of both developers and marketers without requiring significant customization. It typically includes a comprehensive set of tools and features that cater to a wide range of use cases.

A Universal CMS offers a wide array of built-in features and tools, reducing the need for additional plugins or integrations. It is designed to be accessible for users of all technical levels, with intuitive interfaces and extensive documentation.

However, for specific cases that require highly specialized solutions managed outside the CMS, such as complex design systems or highly customized applications, a Universal CMS may not always be the best option. It may lack the flexibility needed to handle unique requirements, necessitating more tailored solutions.

The Journey to the Visual Editor: What Are We Doing To Improve This in Drupal

Drupal Composable refers to Drupal's approach of modularity, reusability, and providing a clear separation of content from presentation, enabling a flexible, scalable system where content and components can be managed independently and reused across different pages.

This approach ensures better quality control, faster content editing, and a more streamlined workflow, thus addressing the diverse needs of a universal CMS.

If you want to learn more about what is a composable CMS, read our article on the topic here.

At Octahedroid, we have been actively contributing to several key Drupal modules to solve the challenges of flexibility, user-friendliness, and efficient content management. Notable contributions include:

Early work:

• Build Hooks: Improves the build and deployment process for static sites, ensuring smoother and more reliable deployments.

Current work:

• GraphQL Compose: Facilitates the automatic generation of GraphQL schemas from Drupal's data structure, making it easier to integrate Drupal with modern frontend frameworks.
• Decoupled Preview Iframe: Provides a real-time preview of content from decoupled sites within Drupal, allowing content editors to see how changes will appear on the front end before publishing.
• Visual Editor: Enhances the editorial experience with intuitive editing tools and real-time previews.

Upcoming work:

• Composable: This module aims to create and manage content in a modular and reusable way.
• Revalidate: Facilitates purging external caching systems as content changes on demand or by user interaction.

Drupal's flexible and composable architecture makes it suitable for a wide range of use cases, accommodating the needs of developers, content editors, and marketers alike. 

Thanks to the maturity of the platform, Drupal can now offer all of the characteristics of a Universal CMS without altering Drupal’s core features and functionalities. This includes a Visual Editor that empower marketers and content writers to create and review content, content scheduling features to follow editorial calendars, security features like user control, and accessibility features such as multilingual pages.

From a technical perspective, Drupal can also handle any development framework in the backend, as well as any technical stack, offering total flexibility and customization to developers. Moreover, new initiatives are gaining traction, such as Palantir’s efforts in making real-time collaboration in Drupal possible. Additionally, efforts in AI-generated atomic content creation by Horizontal Digital are presenting impressive use cases at a granular level within Drupal.

The Future of the CMS and Drupal’s Role Ahead

To see the future of the CMS, we must revisit the story Preston touched on in his article, 'Universal CMS: The death of "pure" headless CMS':

“The CMS blossomed by accident in the late 1990s and early 2000s… editors were willing to relinquish control over the entire website in exchange for layout management and visual building, and developers were willing to surrender authority over every line of code to empower editors to construct templated layouts and use drag-and-drop tools to craft their websites.”

The CMS landscape is evolving, and we are gradually approaching a point where headless and hybrid-headless solutions will converge, taking us back to those times when both technical and non-technical users found common ground.

But once this balance is achieved, the true innovators and leaders in the CMS space will be those that prioritize not the needs of individuals nor specific user groups, but entire organizational teams.

The Universal CMS and the recent efforts in Drupal that we mentioned above prove that the future of the CMS lies in creating platforms that seamlessly integrate the needs of developers, website builders, content editors, and marketers.

Once CMS convergence is achieved between headless CMS and monolithic CMS, solutions that cater to the collaborative efforts of all team members in an organization will stand out. These platforms will need to balance advanced technical capabilities with user-friendly interfaces, ensuring that every team member can work efficiently and effectively.

As we continue to innovate and improve, the convergence of headless, hybrid, and universal CMS features will pave the way for a new generation of content management systems. 

In short, the future of CMS is not just about technology but about understanding and addressing the comprehensive needs of the teams that use it. By focusing on team-centric solutions, we can build a more cohesive, efficient, and user-friendly digital ecosystem that empowers everyone involved.

Join me at the Universal CMS summit, where I’ll be discussing how we’re improving the Developer and Editorial experience in Drupal at Octahedroid and how it aligns with the Universal CMS vision.

https://www.universalcmssummit.com/