Headless publishing, explained for editors

What changes, and what does not, when your stories are managed in one system and displayed by another.

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An open laptop and a cup of coffee on a light wooden desk, seen from above
Photo: Lauren Mancke / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Editors still write, preview, submit for review and publish. Drafts remain private, and published stories keep a version history.

What stays the same

What changes is where the page is drawn. The content system sends structured story data to a separate website, which decides layout, performance and caching.

Editors should not need to know where the page is rendered, only that what they approve is what readers see.

From our Technology desk
Close-up of a laptop keyboard and a coffee mug on a wooden desk
Editors keep writing where they always have. Photo: Ryan Riggins ryan_riggins / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

That separation is why preview and freshness matter. A good setup lets editors preview drafts in the real site design and see published changes reach readers promptly.