Content Management Systems are not application platforms

A presentation at J and Beyond 2018 in May 2018 in Cologne, Germany by Rouven Weßling

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Content Management Systems are not application platforms By Rouven Wessling

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How I became convinced
that content needs to be
nothing but an API.

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Hi, I’m Rouven Developer Evangelist, lover of APIs and cake @RouvenWessling

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Photo by Yusuf Evli on Unsplash Düsseldorf !

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� 8 I have a history here…

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In 2010 I started contributing to Joomla! to get help get 1.6 released

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I stayed a while longer

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PHP Autoloading Released with Joomla! 2.5

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� 12 AJAX Installer Released with Joomla! 1.7.3

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Joomla Platform/Framework

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What happened?

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I burned out Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

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I care about building kick-ass tools for developer

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The Joomla! community felt differently

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So I left Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

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“I love my CMS!”
said no developer ever.

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Security/maintenance 
 cost Rigid extension/ templating system Setting up environments is hard Why do many developers hate CMSs?

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“We are seeing too many organizations run into troubles as they attempt to use their CMS as a platform for delivering large and complex digital applications.”

  • ThoughtWorks Technology Radar

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� 23 Enter the Decoupled CMS API-first CMS Headless CMS Content Infrastructure

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Content Management Systems are not shitty application platforms

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Today’s CMS Page-centric model SILOED CONTENT DISCONNECTED Hard to change Coupled to the CMS’ platform Monolithic architecture Templating Editor Database

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Content Infrastructure AGILE Changes with your software COMPOSABLE Microservice architecture { API } Structured content Independent of 
 medium and platform JSON

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Karen McGrane, Author of “Content Strategy for Mobile” “I don’t necessarily know where this content is going to live. I don’t know how it’s going to be used in the future. But, I do know that I have to create lots of flexible content that has metadata attached to it because I know it’s going to be reused in different places.”

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Deliver content to any platform, not only websites Even to platforms not yet invited… the landscape is evolving with an ever increasing pace

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Andrew Kumar Sr. Technical Program Manager, TELUS ”TELUS Digital is very proud of our engineering culture enabled by a modern technology stack and delivery automation. Decoupling content from code was a big win ushering extreme organizational agility and drastically increasing our speed-to-market on key marketing & delivery initiatives.” ! 29

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Integration with the dev-flow is key for fast moving teams

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“Editors get a CMS; 
 Developer don’t 
 have to deal with one.”

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Don’t let a CMS get in the way of

shipping software. Contentful provides a content infrastructure that enables

teams to power content in any digital product.

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The missing layer of the modern stack Specialized cloud platform services simplify development PaaS and laaS lay the foundation for building websites & apps Experiments SMS + Voice Email Content Platform as a Service (PaaS) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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4 APIs are at the foundation of Contentful Content Management API Images API Content Delivery API Content Preview API

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The Web App • Management of Content for author • Management of the Platform for Administrators • Management of the Content Model for Developers

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Architecture

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Flexible enough to handle any kind of digital product Think outside the CMS box On-ship digital experiences: kiosks, displays, menus, etc. Multivariate testing Learning academy Microsites Audio guides Interactive displays Immersive website Super Bowl campaign Employee training app Chatbot with product recommendations 


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� 38 Workflows

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Environments

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Integration with the dev-flow is key for fast moving teams

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Migrations " module . exports

= function (migration) { 
 migration.deriveLinkedEntries({ 
 contentType: '1kUEViTN4EmGiEaaeC6ouY' , 
 from: [ 'profilePhoto' , 'firstName' , 'lastName' ], 
 toReferenceField: 'profilePhoto_new' , 
 derivedContentType: 'media' , 
 derivedFields: [ 'name' , 'photo' ], 
 identityKey: async (from) => { 


return $ {from.firstName[ 'en-US' ]} -$ {from.lastName[ 'en-US' ]} 
 }, 
 deriveEntryForLocale: async (from, locale) => { 


return { 
 name: $ {from.firstName[locale]} $ {from.lastName[locale]}, 
 photo: from.profilePhoto[locale] 
 } 
 } 
 }); 
 };

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� 42 Should Joomla! be a 
 Content Infrastructure?

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The Flexible Platform 
 Empowering 
 Website Creators Don't let a CMS get in the way of shipping your software.

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Maybe

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ROUVEN WEßLING Twitter: @RouvenWessling Email: rouven@contentful.com