Headless CMS Lessons Learned

Leipzig, 23.05.2017
Marcel Kempf & Carsten Sandtner
// mediaman GmbH
HEADLESS IN THE CMS

Copyright © mediaman.com | 324.05.17
about:us
HEADLESS IN THE CMS
Marcel Kempf
Software Developer at mediaman GmbH //
Carsten Sandtner
Technical Director at mediaman GmbH //
@casarock

HELLO WE ARE MEDIAMAN

130 digital specialists worldwide
§ Founded in 1996
§ Locations in Mainz, Stuttgart,
Shanghai, and Boston
ABOUT US

Focus: We are specialised in servicing the automotive, finance, insurance
and manufacturing industries.

We are proud of the trustworthy and dependable
relationships with our numerous longstanding customers.
ÜBER UNS
Automotive Finance Industrial Consumer

Derivation Architecture
Lessons
learned

Lessons
learned

The Beginning
©GregRakozy
https://unsplash.com/photos/oMpAz-DN-9I

Our Challenges
©W.Carterhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_and_blue_pill.jpg

Challenges
§ Several multilanguage CMS instances
– Mass of corporate content
§ Overtake existing shop
§ Existing independant systems (CMS, Shop)
§ Connect PIM

Preferred solution
SOLUTION
§ One user interface to the customer
§ One system is responsible for content delivery
§ Everything else is being used with an API

Website and shop melt into OneWeb
ONEWEB
OneWeb
Website Shop
Content
• Product experience
• Productfinder
• Campaign
• Passion though inspiring content
• Excellent UX
• Dealer Locator
• Company presentation
Shop
• Buy products or save on wish list
• Conversion
• Lead generation
• Cross- and upselling
• Payment
• Personal account
Overall
• Multilanguage, responsive, SEO optimized

The Challenge
©SonnyAbesamis:https://flic.kr/p/ed4vHr

Requirements
THE CONTENDERS
§ Good documentation
§ Active community
§ Known technology
§ An API
§ Migration of existing contents should be easy

Typo3 as CMS
§ Active community
§ Known technology
§ Easy migration
§ An API
✓
✗
✓
✓
✓

Magento 2 as shop system
§ Active community
§ Known technology
§ An API
§ Easy migration
✓
(✓)
✓
✓

Possible solution(s)
©GerwinSturm:https://flic.kr/p/7zsLdk

More considerations
§ Shop Extension for Typo3
– We need a real shop! ;)
§ CMS Plugin for Magento 2
– Migration of existing content pages isn‘t
easy
– Workflows?

Our Solution
©MiguelÁ.Padriñán
https://www.pexels.com/photo/mathematics-colorful-game-color-19677/

Lessons
learned

Overview
Hosting
Backend
Version 2.x
OneWeb
Frontend

MagentoTYPO3
Highlevel architecture
TYPO3 Magento
Redis
Browser
REST
Cache Magento REST
Responses using Tags

Logitics
Backend systems
OneWeb
External systems
Warehouse Shipping
ERP (SAP)
Webshop (Magento)
Website
(Typo3)
Product
data
Customer
data
OrdersPrices Stock
Product
data
NL
Permission
OrdersStock
Customer
data
Prices
Analytics Paypal+
Tracking
Tracking
Data Warehouse,
DMS, PIM/CRM

Planned Infrastucture
Typo3 (4x EC2)
auto scaling group
Magento (4x EC2)
Auto scaling group
Amazon
Aurora
Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon
CloudFront
Amazon
S3
ELB ELB

Current Infrastructure
§ Typo3: nginx, Redis, MySQL
§ Magento 2: nginx, MySQL
Production
Magento2Typo3Firewall
Staging
Magento2Typo3Firewall

Extensions
TYPO3
Template Custom extensions by mediaman
Third Party
Extensions
Custom content elements
CSS, JS, Constants etc.
Shared
Shop Code Own Extensions

Using Magento API
MAGENTO 2 - ARCHITECTURE
§ Requests are proxied through Typo3
– no direct access to the Magento APIs
§ User is authenticated via a user token
– Stored and appended by Typo3

Which APIs where not included in the
Magento core?
§ Fetching/Creating reviews
§ Fetching rendered blocks
§ Fetching (full) related products by relation type
– Related Products/Up- and Cross-Sells
§ Newsletter interactions
§ Password reset
§ Wishlist interactions

Which APIs where not included in the
Magento core?
§ No filter for only in-stock products
§ No filter for configurable products

Necessary add-ons
§ PayPal Plus
§ Follow-Up E-Mails
§ Multiple coupons

API-Only and 3rd Party add-ons
§ Templates cannot be used
– Have to be written again in Typo3
§ APIs often don’t offer enough functionality
§ Session based authentication has to be changed to token based
– Many plugin and preference classes

Tests FTW!
§ TDD approach
– Think before you code
– Secure refactoring
– Better architectures
– Fun!

Communication with ERP (SAP)
Magento SAP
Synchronized
Customer has own SAP ID
User data and orders
Master for stock and prices

Workflow – Content Management
Editor Staging Production
Content Sync

Lessons
learned

Magento 2 Core System
§ Some features may not be
ready yet
§ Community is not that big
§ There may be bugs…
!
EARLY ADOPTERS HARD LIFE

Extensions
§ Extensions may not exist
§ Extensions may not be ready
🤔
EARLY ADOPTERS HARD LIFE

Going API only
§ Where are my templates?
§ Extensions may not have an
API
§ What does it mean “You can
not use the Extensions
Template”?
😮
BEING HEADLESS

In summary
§ Being early adaptor is hard
§ Headless means:
– You have to rebuild many existing processes in the CMS
– Extensions and add-ons are not meant to be used headless!
– Shop templates have to be rebuilt (every single one…)
§ But headless means, too
– You are able to build content rich pages within your shop
– Marketing will love you ;)
§ It was a tough but interesting ride!

Leipzig, 23.05.2017
Marcel Kempf Carsten Sandtner
@casarock
sandtner@mediaman.de
THANK YOU!

Headless CMS Lessons Learned

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