Thread by @mor10

The age of monolithic end-to-end CMS solutions is coming to an end (if it hasn't already ended). The modern and future web is an API-ified web where clients consume data through APIs and nimble front-ends are decoupled from the creation layer.

Right now, tools like @GatsbyJS and @nextjs make it easier to pull and combine data from existing monolithic CMSes and combining it into a coherent and performance focused front-end. From my perspective this is a stepping stone into a fully decoupled future.

Monolithic end-to-end CMS solutions like @drupal, @WordPress, @joomla, and walled gardens like @Shopify and @Wix made web publishing accessible to all. To do that, they had to be everything to everyone. This is the weak link in the system, the anachronism still living.

The front-end web is evolving at exponentially increasing speed. No end-to-end solution can successfully split its focus between building a robust data management system and an up-to-date front-end. They are separate specialties requiring separate strategies.

The back-end and front-end on the web now work at vastly different speeds, and are quickly decoupling alltogether. We are entering into a transition period where traditional web-as-something-you-consume-on-a-rectangular-device will be replaced by new modalities.

Tools and devices are coming online that enable the consumer to decouple content from its presentation and combine content from one source with content from another source. You may already be using some of them, like @firefox Reader Mode.

Current experiments in AI-powered content curation are really a glimpse through the looking glass into the API-ified future I'm talking about: theverge.com/2022/5/11/2306…

In this future, rapidly approaching, the carefully designed front-end is tossed to the wayside and consumers get straight at the content. A monolithic end-to-end CMS still trying to create parity between its back-end and front-end today is solving a problem for 5 years ago.

I raised these issues almost a decade ago: mor10.com/glass-bubbles-…

Other people much smarter than me predicted this long before me: wired.com/2013/02/the-en…

I predict an inflection point in the near future when three key components mature simultaneously:
- #Jamstack CMS with #WordPress-like simplicity and usability
- #Gatsby-type front-end framework with browser-based design and configuration
- An interface layer to couple the two

Think design in the browser along the lines of @argyleink's VisBug: chrome.google.com/webstore/detai…

Combined with the click-and-customize features of GraphIQL github.com/graphql/graphi…

And a nimble and fully customizable data management layer (CMS) outputting REST/GraphQL endpoints where the creator can pick a content model template or customize their own.

In the future I predict, a "website" is actually a content layer where the creator builds a robust and queryable content model with a high usability api-centric CMS, then builds a web-focused front-end by curating the data from the api into a visual presentation in the browser.

The content layer no longer treats the front-end web presentation as the final output the way monolithic end-to-end CMSes make us do. Instead it helps the creator think of the content as content to be consumed in any way the consumer chooses - the original intent of the web.

So while the consumer may visit the front-end website using a rectangular screen, the creator (site owner) knows there is a high chance the content is never viewed on the front-end but rather consumed through other modalities, and builds the content for this future.

Allow me to quote myself from 2013:
"In its quest for broad appeal, #WordPress is becoming overgeneralized. I fear this may erode its foothold on the web and in the end break the application as a whole."
mor10.com/wordpress-at-1…

9 years later monolithic end-to-end CMSes like #WordPress and #Drupal and #Shopify etc are facing challenges from two variants of trying-to-be-everything-to-everyone:
- Overgeneralization
- Being end-to-end solutions in a decoupled world

Intrinsically coupling content creation and management with front-end presentation, and more extremely storing front-end-specific data and instructions in the content layer, is an anachronism. It's not how the current web works, and it runs counter to the path of the future web.

Separating these concerns - building amazing user-friendly usability-focussed decoupled content management systems with robust, standardized and flexible APIs, and equally amazing user-friendly usability-focused decoupled front-end frameworks to consume these APIs is the future.

And it goes without saying none of this will be possible without putting #accessibility first. The whole purpose of the web is accessibility. It has always been. #a11y is the job.