Headless CMS tools, in which the structure of content is decoupled from its presentation as “pages” on the front end, have seen rapid and growing adoption over the last several years. This is with good reason: decoupled approaches to content are unrivaled in their support for creating flexible, reusable omnichannel and personalization-ready content. In practice, however, many organizations struggle with adopting a “decoupled” mindset: when our familiar “page-focused” shortcuts for structuring and authoring content are gone, we tend to fill in with what we know: more pages. 

In this talk I will situate headless CMSes in a content design context and identify the conceptual gap decoupling creates. I will then identify and show real-world examples of three places where content designers and developers can use principles from the practice of taxonomy to fill these conceptual gaps and make the most of their headless CMS: between digital resources, within digital resources, and within block level content. 

Attendees of this talk will learn:
– The advantages headless CMSes bring to structuring, authoring, using, and repurposing content
– What organizations lose—often unwittingly—when they adopt a headless approach to content 
– Three specific locations in the structure of digital resources where designers and developers can use taxonomy best practices to fill in this missing structure and help their clients and organizations create purposeful, resilient systems for creating and managing content