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What is a headless CMS?
UPDATED OCTOBER 30, 2026
A headless CMS is a content system that stores your text, images and data and serves them through an API, without dictating how the website looks. The site is built separately, on a modern stack, and pulls content from the CMS at build or request time. You get the editing comfort of a traditional CMS with none of its weight: no theme, no plugins, no database on the public server to attack. Ghost builds on Sanity, and hands you the project.
Why it matters to a business owner
- You edit copy, images and pages in a clean interface; a developer is not needed for changes.
- The public site is static or server-rendered, so it is fast and hard to break.
- The same content can feed a website, an app, a newsletter, a chatbot.
- If you change the site later, the content stays where it is.
Headless versus WordPress
WordPress bundles the editor and the website in one application with its database exposed to the internet, which is why it needs constant updates. A headless setup separates the two: the editor lives in the CMS, the site is generated from it. Same editing experience, far less to maintain.
> faq
Related questions
- Is a headless CMS harder to use?
- For editing, no. It is a form with your fields. The complexity is on the developer's side, once, at build time.
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