oliverdavies.uk/content/node.e88b4449-20b6-4165-880b-6d34b9579781.json

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    "title": [
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            "value": "Should you have a separate front-end for your Drupal website?"
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            "value": "\n          <p>A few years ago, \"decoupled\" or \"headless\" Drupal was a popular approach, leveraging Drupal's built-in JSON:API module to expose its data via an API which can be consumed by a separate front-end application.<\/p>\n\n<p>The front-end application would retrieve the data from Drupal via the API and generate the appropriate HTML.<\/p>\n\n<p>It's an approach I've used in the past and <a href=\"\/presentations\/decoupling-drupal-vuejs\">spoken about at conferences<\/a>, but it comes with pros and cons.<\/p>\n\n<p>In theory, as the Drupal (or back-end application) and front-end are completely separate, there can be two separate and independent teams working on them.<\/p>\n\n<p>This adds overhead and complexity and I've found that one team will commonly be blocking the other instead of both being able to work in parallel.<\/p>\n\n<p>As I said yesterday, <a href=\"\/daily\/2025\/01\/26\/layout-builder\">previewing content in Drupal can be an issue<\/a> - particularly with a decoupled approach which needs a front-end to be rebuilt before the changes can be seen.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you have a separate front-end, you'll need to create everything from scratch, such as writing accessible HTML markup and othe standard features that would normally be provided by Drupal and, because you've got two separate front-end and back-end applications, you've got twice the amount of maintenance.<\/p>\n\n<p>You could also be excluding yourself from any new features that will be available in future versions of Drupal or Drupal CMS, such as the new Experience Builder.<\/p>\n\n<p>Whilst decoupled\/headless builds are a viable option and can work well in some situations, it's not something I recommend often.<\/p>\n\n        ",
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            "processed": "\n          <p>A few years ago, \"decoupled\" or \"headless\" Drupal was a popular approach, leveraging Drupal's built-in JSON:API module to expose its data via an API which can be consumed by a separate front-end application.<\/p>\n\n<p>The front-end application would retrieve the data from Drupal via the API and generate the appropriate HTML.<\/p>\n\n<p>It's an approach I've used in the past and <a href=\"http:\/\/default\/presentations\/decoupling-drupal-vuejs\">spoken about at conferences<\/a>, but it comes with pros and cons.<\/p>\n\n<p>In theory, as the Drupal (or back-end application) and front-end are completely separate, there can be two separate and independent teams working on them.<\/p>\n\n<p>This adds overhead and complexity and I've found that one team will commonly be blocking the other instead of both being able to work in parallel.<\/p>\n\n<p>As I said yesterday, <a href=\"http:\/\/default\/daily\/2025\/01\/26\/layout-builder\">previewing content in Drupal can be an issue<\/a> - particularly with a decoupled approach which needs a front-end to be rebuilt before the changes can be seen.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you have a separate front-end, you'll need to create everything from scratch, such as writing accessible HTML markup and othe standard features that would normally be provided by Drupal and, because you've got two separate front-end and back-end applications, you've got twice the amount of maintenance.<\/p>\n\n<p>You could also be excluding yourself from any new features that will be available in future versions of Drupal or Drupal CMS, such as the new Experience Builder.<\/p>\n\n<p>Whilst decoupled\/headless builds are a viable option and can work well in some situations, it's not something I recommend often.<\/p>\n\n        ",
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