Traditional CMS: Can’t Manage Sh*t

I was recently invited to give a talk about content management systems at this year's MAD//FEST in London. This vibrant festival spans three days at the iconic Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, where marketing, advertising, and technology professionals gather to share ideas, innovations, and industry insights. I could talk about content management systems all day, especially the challenges that traditional CMSs bring. However, due to the audience's makeup at MAD//Fest, I wanted to make it accessible and non-technical, something anyone could attend and understand.

To help achieve this, I teamed up with Darren Hughes, a creative, and Simon Wright from Storyblok , our favourite Headless CMS.

Darren's not being technical worked perfectly; it wouldn’t work for the audience if he didn't understand it. We devised a simple analogy: think of a traditional CMS (like WordPress or Umbraco) as a one-man band juggling everything for your website. Not only looking after the content management but also how your website looks, functions and any integrations.

On the other hand, a Headless CMS (like Storyblok) is like assembling an orchestra of services. The CMS service handles your content without restricting your website's design or functionality.

We've tried using diagrams to explain the difference in the past, but this more straightforward explanation seems to resonate with the audience.

Working with Storyblok, we pinpointed five main frustrations of a traditional CMS that a headless solution can resolve:

1. Security
2. Complexity
3. Performance
4. Flexibility
5. Future-proofing

The audience connected with these frustrations. After all, who hasn't found a CMS challenging to use, needing the dev team to make changes even though the whole point of a CMS was to avoid that?

Security was particularly eye-opening, with some surprising stats: In 2023, Sucuri found that 39% of all infected CMSs were outdated when compromised, and a staggering 95% were using WordPress.

I didn't want to criticise WordPress too harshly; any CMS can be at risk if not kept up-to-date. The main issue with WordPress, through no fault of its own, is its popularity, which makes it a prime target for hackers. By choosing a headless CMS solution like Storyblok, updates are automatically handled in the cloud, so you don't have to worry about them. When we recently pitched for a large website project, this was one of the deciding factors for the client in choosing our solution. They loved that our proposal eliminated the need for updates and maintenance, which had previously been a burden on their IT department.

We wrapped up our talk by showcasing the new MAD//Fest website, built by Anything and powered by Storyblok CMS.

We are incredibly proud of the site, and it was fantastic to receive so many compliments from people at MAD//Fest about how much they loved the new design.

In addition to speaking at MAD//Fest, we had a picnic bench where we ran a competition to win a PS5. Participants answered a short questionnaire (Confess Your CMS) about what they love and hate about their CMS. We received some great responses, and I'm looking forward to diving into them. I'll share our findings another time.

A huge thanks to MAD//FEST for the opportunity to speak! If you haven't experienced MAD//Fest yet, I highly recommend it. It's an incredible event like no other, featuring amazing talks throughout the day, plus beers, cocktails, and this year, a ridiculously good Tequila bar.

If you're thinking about switching to a headless CMS or have any questions, I'd love to help! Feel free to book a 30-minute consultation with me.