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

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title:
  - value: 'Should you have a separate front-end for your Drupal website?'
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  - value: '2025-01-27T00:00:00+00:00'
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      <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>

      <p>The front-end application would retrieve the data from Drupal via the API and generate the appropriate HTML.</p>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <p>Whilst decoupled/headless builds are a viable option and can work well in some situations, it's not something I recommend often.</p>

              
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    processed: |
      <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>

      <p>The front-end application would retrieve the data from Drupal via the API and generate the appropriate HTML.</p>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <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>

      <p>Whilst decoupled/headless builds are a viable option and can work well in some situations, it's not something I recommend often.</p>

              
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