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Combining Java CMS and GraphQL to Simplify Headless Content Management

Headless content management

With the release of dotCMS 5.1, our enterprise Java CMS now natively supports GraphQL. In this article, I’ll walk you through the basics of GraphQL as an API and query language, how it differs from REST, and how dotCMS and GraphQL come together to streamline headless content management.

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What Is GraphQL?

GraphQL is an open-source data query language for APIs. It enables users to specify exactly what data they would like to retrieve from the server. Developed by Facebook in 2012, GraphQL became open-sourced in 2015. It is used internally for mobile applications, and it is widely seen as an alternative to the REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture.

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Improving Page Performance (and SEO) Using Google’s Lighthouse Developer Tool

Search engine optimization (SEO) has gotten a lot more complicated over the past few years. Back in the old days (you know, 2016), SEO primarily referred to on-page optimizations. Things like page title, meta descriptions, header tags, image alt tags, and so on, but things have gotten a lot more technical with the latest Google updates. Last year, site speed became one of the signals used to rank pages, but page speed isn't just crucial for SEO; it's also essential to the user experience. Pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page. Longer load times have also been shown to adversely affect conversions rates.

In this blog, I'll show you how to do some simple things to ensure your pages are performing well, and we’ll take a look at some code examples of how to programmatically ensure best practices for page performance. I'm using dotCMS for this post and will make some references to the tools available in dotCMS specifically; however, these tips can be applied to most CMSs.