How a Headless CMS Saved My Life

Okay so that might be a bit dramatic... but I am extremely grateful for finding out about headless CMSs.

For the longest time, I have been trying to create a website for myself that I am proud of. I feel like I can never be satisfied, which might diagnose me as a perfectionist. I don't know if I would call myself a perfectionist, but maybe the first stage is denial?

It has been a long journey, and I wasn't about to settle for creating a website for myself where I didn't have to write my own code. I wouldn't be able to call myself a developer if that was the case. Here's the short version of how I ended up being "saved by a headless CMS".

When I started out developing, I knew I needed a personal website so that I could showcase my skills and market myself on the internet. The progression of my personal website has reflected my learning curve appropriately. Of course, my first version was some simple HTML and CSS—a few pages with some color and style that reflected who I was: simple, a beginner, and a bit void. I needed something more. I was not satisfied yet. So I kept learning.

The next version was about the same, except for adding Bootstrap to make styling easier. I liked being able to find little tricks to speed things up. I was getting there and knew I was on the right track.

As time went by, I got involved with a project that required Joomla, so I tried redoing my personal website with it. That was complete overkill. I enjoyed styling and coding a website—not installing a bunch of plugins. That version never got off the ground, so I kept the previous version and just updated it occasionally.

After that, I submerged myself in SAP development at my day job—learning design patterns and test-driven development. I lost touch with web development during that time.

Eventually, I wanted to start blogging. I opted for a WordPress site. It was quick, easy, and the blog engine was already there. It turned out alright—I had a website with content and I was satisfied... enough. But after a while, it just wasn’t me. The website didn’t reflect who I was or the style I wanted.

I got more comfortable with my SAP skills and decided to focus on web development again. I went through FreeCodeCamp to re-solidify my foundation. I learned more JavaScript and started going to JavaScript and web dev Meetups. I discovered React and fell in love with it—its structure and reusability were exactly what I was looking for.

I built a couple small sample apps in React and Node.js. Then I started building my personal site in React. The bones of the site came together fairly quickly, but I still needed the blog aspect. I didn’t want to code it all myself, and I was honestly dreading the process.

Then one day, I stumbled across an article about ButterCMS—a headless CMS that hooks into your frontend. It was amazing. So easy, and exactly what I needed. I didn’t want to code all the components for a blog, let alone figure out how I’d write and store the posts.

ButterCMS saved my life because I could just write all my blog posts in their UI and serve them through my site. It was probably the best thing I’d found in a long time. It gave me the motivation to finish my personal site, and I can honestly say I’m extremely proud of it. It’s damn near perfect to me.

Of course I’ll still make changes and updates, but for now—I finally have a site I’m happy with.