Gary Joins Umbraco Headless Team

The group is made of 11 members of the Umbraco development community and contributors from Umbraco HQ, and will meet quarterly to provide real-world input and act as a sounding board for the Heartcore and CMS development teams at Umbraco. 

The group is expected to discuss features, ideas, strategy and how partners can apply headless technology to solve real world challenges, in so doing helping to shape the product roadmap for Umbraco Heartcore, and the headless features of the main CMS product. 

The idea of a community team is nothing new for Umbraco, which supports its mission to be the world’s friendliest CMS with a regular programme of events, meetups and festivals to engage the community in making the Umbraco products the best they can possibly be. 

Commenting on the appointment, Gary offered: 

“With headless and API-first conversations, the digital landscape continues to evolve at pace, none more so than in the DXP space. I hope to bring a blend of technical and business experience to help contribute to the future direction of Umbraco Heartcore, liaising directly with the Umbraco team.”

We’re looking forward to seeing what the team comes up with. 

What is Headless technology? 

We’re glad you asked, because it can be hard to get to grips with if you don’t live and breathe technology. 

Traditional Content Management Systems were designed to create websites, and so all of the information, styling and content is stored together in frameworks that make sense for creating website front ends. This can make it difficult to repurpose content when companies are operating a multi- or omni-channel strategy. 

A headless content management system (like Umbraco’s Heartcore) keeps the information separate from the front end experience, connecting the two via an API. This allows a business to manage content, like product information, company information and even checkout experience in a single place, but deploy that content to any front end system (not just a website). This can allow customers to interact with the same back end data via a separate website and mobile app for example, and maybe other omnichannel experiences like smart watches and in-store displays and kiosks.

Done well, a headless approach saves time for businesses maintaining content, and means customers get a consistent user experience.