what is a Content Management System (CMS)?

Content Management Systems are the Web interfaces for all Administrative tasks.
These software applications allow users to create, edit, manage, and publish content on a website. They provide a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require coding knowledge to manage website content.

A CMS web application acts as a behind-the-scenes tool for managing website content. You use a web interface to interact with the CMS and manage your content, but the CMS itself is a separate software application.
It is a software that allows you to create and manage content while collaborating with other users.

There are Mainly 2 types of Architectures of CMS: One is Traditional CMS ( Coupled CMS ) and the other is Headless CMS, lets dig deep into both types

Traditional CMS (Coupled CMS) :

In a coupled architecture, the front end (head) and back end (body) of the CMS together manage both the content and the presentation of that content. The front end of a CMS is responsible for displaying the content to the users. The back end of a CMS handles the content creation, management, and storage. Content Management, Database Management, and User Management. Examples of Traditional Content management are WordPress and Drupal these are the widely used Content management tools with the traditional architecture.

Difference between architectures of Traditional and Headless CMS

But there are some limitations of this architecture, some of them are
Changes in one part often require updates in others.
Scaling the system can be challenging as the whole system needs to be scaled together.
The tight coupling of the monolithic architecture of the coupled CMS puts a boundary on the development of microservices of the system.
A singular database is helpful for the sake of simplicity, but it becomes problematic for complex functions.

To Overcome these disadvantages the Headless CMS comes into the picture

Headless CMS(Decoupled CMS):

A headless CMS is any type of back-end content management system where the content repository “body” is separated or decoupled from the presentation layer “head.”

It is only responsible for managing the backend and it does not deal with how the frontend will look.
Headless CMS exposes the content through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). These APIs act as messengers, delivering the content to any frontend technology you choose.
BE and FE are loosely coupled, this kind of CMS has an Omni-channel output delivery means they can deliver content to any platform — websites, mobile apps, single-page applications, or even smart devices — using the same headless CMS backend.

Types of Architectures of CMS

Comparison Between the Famous Decoupled CMS Tools :

References:

https://tiiny.host/blog/headless-coupled-decoupled-cms-whats-the-difference/#coupled-cms-architecturehttps://docs.strapi.io/
https://docs.directus.io/
https://prismic.io/
https://www.contentful.com/developers/docs/
https://www.sanity.io/