Through headless architecture and continuous deployment, it's possible to manage multiple websites hosted separately, all from a single content management system (CMS).
Traditionally, a website's backend and frontend tightly integrate and are hosted together on one server.
"Headless" refers to decoupling the frontend. With headless architecture, the backend and frontend can be hosted separately.
In addition to some benefits for developers, this enables a single CMS to provide content for multiple websites.
The backend may consist of modern CMS platforms like Payload, Strapi, and Contentful, designed to be headless from the start.
These options pair well with JavaScript frameworks such as Svelte, Vue, and React for the frontend.
Even traditional platforms like WordPress and Shopify can operate in "headless mode" together with a JavaScript framework.
Continuous deployment involves automatically redeploying a website, app, or software after changes to its code and/or content.
This process may include multiple channels, or "pipelines": for example, one going to China, and another for a global website.
Testing is often included to identify and address issues before they reach production.
Despite two websites being able to pull data from a single CMS, issues persist.
For instance, although the two websites are hosted separately, one would still need to fetch data from a CMS hosted in a different region.
Static site generation allows the entire website to be pre-built as simple HTML files, removing the need for a live data connection.