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Using a CMS

Contents

Types of Headless
Headless CMS Providers
Related
- From the Community

Content Management Systems (CMS) add a web-based interface to your site, allowing both technical and non-technical folks the ability to easily update the web site on-the-go.

Eleventy (like most site generators) is not tightly coupled to any specific CMS and offers the flexibility to work with a wide variety of available industry and community options! Content Management Systems decoupled in this way are known as Headless.

Using a Headless CMS offers a variety of benefits that will be immediately recognizable to developers familiar with more tightly-coupled/monolithic options, where the front and back-end are co-dependent on each other.

Primarily, using Headless allows developers more control over the front-end. This alleviates pressure on front-end performance and accessibility issues common to monolithic options. It’s worth noting that traditionally tightly-coupled solutions like Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress are also starting to offer Headless options too.

Types of Headless Jump to heading

Digging deeper, there are two main types of Headless CMS options:

Source Control: checks files directly into your code repository (git is a very popular one). You may hear these referred to as Git-based CMS solutions. A few benefits of this approach:
- Your data and content are already versioned.
- Works as-is with your existing deployment process, including branch/test/pre-production deploy previews.
- No data migration is needed if you decide to swap providers—it’s baked in (not fried).
API Based: provide an external API that can be queried in your build or serverless functions. This approach gives you access to a powerful query language that can unlock access to complex data structures.

Headless CMS Providers Jump to heading

The Eleventy CMS for Visual Editing, CloudCannon CMS

Recommended Partner Git-based

Screenshot of https://www.sanity.io/

API

Screenshot of https://prismic.io/

API

Screenshot of https://ghost.org/

API

Screenshot of https://www.storyblok.com/

API

Screenshot of https://strapi.io/

API

Screenshot of https://webflow.com/cms

API

Screenshot of https://directus.io/

API

Screenshot of https://www.builder.io/

API

Screenshot of https://www.wix.com/developers/headless/

API

Screenshot of https://agilitycms.com/

API

Screenshot of https://developers.notion.com/

API

Screenshot of https://decapcms.org/

Git-based

Screenshot of https://spinalcms.com/

Git-based

Screenshot of https://www.contentful.com/

API

WordPress REST API

Screenshot of https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/

API

Screenshot of https://getpublii.com/

Git-based

The list above is not meant to be exhaustive.

From the Community Jump to heading

×38 resources courtesy of 11tybundle.dev curated by Bob Monsour

Building a Live Preview with Eleventy, Contentful, and Liquid Templating — Silvestar Bistrović (2024)
Building a meetup community site using Global Data Files — Juha-Matti Santala (2024)
How to connect Eleventy and Storyblok — Estela Franco (2024)
Adding Decap CMS to 11ty — Cassey Lottman (2024)
I changed my mind, my CMS adventure — Steve Abraham (2024)

Expand to see 33 more resources.

Building a multi-language Taylor Swift Fan Site with CloudCannon and Eleventy (Zach's version) — Zach Leatherman (2023)
Let’s create a microblog with visual editing using Bookshop and Eleventy — Zach Leatherman (2023)
Live Editing an Eleventy Project in CloudCannon with Bookshop — CloudCannon (2023)
Using Wordpress as a headless CMS for Eleventy — Mike Aparicio (2023)
How to setup Agit CMS with your 11ty website — Ginger (2023)
Integrating WordPress Posts with 11ty — Kevin Gimbel (2023)
TinaCMS + 11ty — Clayton Errington (2023)
CloudCannon as a git based headless CMS for static site generators — Piotr Maliński (2023)
Eleventy and Storyblok - My perfect combination — Estela Franco (2023)
Headless kiosk application (with Kirby CMS) — James Steel (2023)
From Zero to CMS in 2 Minutes with CloudCannon and Eleventy — CloudCannon (2023)
Build a Blog with Eleventy (11ty) and Webiny Headless CMS — Maurice King (2023)
Working with CloudCannon and Eleventy - My Experience — Raymond Camden (2023)
Post previews with Ghost, Eleventy & Netlify — David Darnes (2023)
Adding Tina CMS to 11ty — Mike Street (2023)
WordPress & Eleventy part two: Eleventy — Dana Byerly (2022)
WordPress & Eleventy part one: WordPress — Dana Byerly (2022)
Add Netlify CMS to an existing 11ty site — Mike Street (2022)
Using Sanity CMS to host an image gallery for an existing 11ty site — Cassey Lottman (2022)
Using the Netlify CMS locally — Trevor Morris (2022)
How to use Contentful with Eleventy — Henry Desroches (2021)
Turn static HTML/CSS into a blog with CMS using the JAMStack — Kevin Powell (2021)
Sanity with 11ty — crossingtheruby (2021)
How to: add Twitter and Instagram Embeds on an Eleventy website using Sanity — Nicolas Goutay (2021)
Using 11ty JavaScript Data files to mix Markdown and CMS content into one collection — Bryan Robinson (2021)
How to add Netlify CMS to an existing Eleventy project — Hanna Taylor (2021)
How to Use WordPress as a Headless CMS for Eleventy — Craig Buckler (2021)
Integrating Contentful with Eleventy to create static sites — Contentful (2020)
Building a website with a static site generator, part 1: Setup — Juha-Matti Santala (2020)
How my site is built with Eleventy + Ghost — Juha-Matti Santala (2020)
Consuming a headless CMS GraphQL API with Eleventy — Jérôme Coupé (2019)
Eleventy and Ghost — Ghost (2019)
Use Eleventy to generate a Ghost blog — David Darnes (2019)

Other pages in Getting Started: