Why quick-fix headless platforms like WordPress are a poisoned chalice for media and entertainment companies

A specialised SaaS headless CMS gives you all the big picture things like scalability, security, and peace of mind, as well as a vast array of out-of-the-box optimisation specifically for your sector to make your daily lives better.

Published: 12:58, 02 August 2024

In the lightning-paced world of media and entertainment, choosing the right Content Management System is crucial. 

Few things have as significant or lasting impact on success goals than the very system which creates and manages your content, and acts as the office for your content teams. In a sector where deadlines are immovable and audience response can be measured instantly, having a CMS that is geared to suit the exacting needs of content plays is vital.

While WordPress is of course popular and well-known, using it as the base for a headless CMS in such a specialised sector can raise significant challenges. A SaaS headless CMS, like Glide CMS or Glide Publishing Platform, offers distinct advantages because it is tailored to the industry's specific needs from the outset, and needs no modifying from a generic form.

Scalability & Performance

Media and entertainment companies at the eye of a story or event routinely experience very high and spiky traffic patterns, especially during high profile news events or when a breaking news story gains traction.

Because of their monolithic architecture, headless CMS like WordPress can struggle with scalability. To smoothly manage traffic spikes and move large volumes of content, a CMS needs to scale effortlessly as audience demand ramps up.

As a specialised toolset for the sector, built with decades of experience in media and publishing encountering the needs of customers in the sector, Glide CMS and Glide Publishing Platform are designed to handle these sort of traffic and content demands. This leads to helping guarantee the smooth, responsive user experience that is key to engaging and growing your audience because it's when traffic is high that you need your systems to be working most smoothly.

Specialised features

A SaaS headless CMS designed for media and entertainment will offer as standard features critical for the sectors.

• Composable Back-End: Glide Publishing Platform provides a flexible back-end which integrates seamlessly with other systems common to media and publishing, even print systems. Its modular approach allows media companies to adapt quickly  and pivot ideas and workflows to meet the to changing requirements of today's audiences without needing to overhaul their entire CMS. With Glide you just reconfigure and go.
• Easy Article Modelling: Creating and managing different types of content is simplified with intuitive article modelling. Unlike generic systems such as WordPress, which often require complex custom post types and plugins, Glide CMS offers straightforward and flexible content modelling tailored to the needs of media professionals.
• Live Reporting: Live blogs and event coverage by teams of reporters watching or attending events is a huge driver of new audiences and increased engagement. Tools for live blogging are typically so specialised that they come as separate systems in their own right outside your main CMS, yet Glide CMS includes them as standard in its publishing platform.
• Multichannel Publishing: Easily distribute content across multiple platforms and channels from a single source. This capability is a fundamental need today for media companies looking to get every bit of reach and engagement across different audiences without having to rekey or duplicate effort over and over. With Glide, you write once, and send everywhere.
• Internationalisation: Built-in support for internationalisation equates to easy management of multilingual content. Internationalisation is not just about doing articles in different languages: it rapidly grows to encompass site design and structure, URL strategies, variable content strategies, tailored pricing and user journey options, and much more. And if content teams are in different locations and working in different native languages, the requirements for good CMS tools escalate. This feature is particularly important for media companies with global audiences or seeking to grow in new territories, to efficiently handle translations and regional content variations.
• Best Practice Publishing Workflows: Optimised workflows based on industry best practices don't just help adhere to requirements for quality, oversight, and audit trails, but also raise output volumes and quality by making the content creation and publishing processes smoother and quicker. This reduces friction, helps to ensure consistency, and brings better collaboration among teams too.

Security concerns

Primarily due to the sheer scale of adoption as a general website CMS, WordPress and other open source platforms have become prime targets for cyberattacks. Vulnerabilities quickly become known and targeted, while overreliance on the 60,000 or so available plugins from global contributors increases the risk of vulnerabilities. Glide CMS and Glide Publishing Platform offer robust security features, regular updates, and compliance with industry standards, all designed to provide a safer environment for managing and distributing content. Enhanced security measures include encryption, secure access controls, and regular vulnerability assessments, all managed by specialists at no cost to users.

Maintenance & Updates

Managing a headless WordPress or open source setup requires continuous maintenance, including updates to core software, themes, and plugins, as well as the aforementioned attendance to security issues. 

Collectively it's time-consuming and expensive, and demands significant technical expertise to ensure compatibility and avoid planned or unplanned downtime. And all these factors are intensified when any bespoke work is carried out to tailor the generic CMS to your specific team needs, let alone what you want to do to make your sites better.

As a SaaS delivered and managed platform, Glide CMS and Glide Publishing Platform handle updates and maintenance, allowing media companies to focus on content creation and distribution rather than technical upkeep. This managed service reduces the burden on internal IT and devops teams, while we ensure the CMS is always up-to-date with the latest features, updates, an security.

Integration & Flexibility

A SaaS headless CMS is built to integrate easily with other tools and platforms; one for publishing and media is even more targeted at the tools you need and use.

Glide CMS and Glide Publishing Platform connect seamlessly with different analytics tools, advertising networks, and social media channels, to smooth workflows and improve operational coherence. This capability to integrate lets media companies streamline things and connect disparate systems to ensure their digital assets work together well. You can also introduce your own custom integrations to meet specific business needs, further enhancing your overall flexibility as a business.

Choosing a SaaS headless CMS tailored for the media and entertainment industry is a strategic choice for staying ahead. Overall, when evaluating content management solutions there is a key question around using familiar but unspecialised systems such as WordPress and others like it, which are great at generalised CMS duties but quickly become limited and restrictive when faced with the very particular needs of the media and entertainment industries.

Platforms like Glide CMS and Glide Publishing Platform are built from inception to provide the scalability, security, specialised features, and integration capabilities essential for success in sectors that are by definition fast-moving and highly-reactive. 

To learn more about how Glide CMS and Glide Publishing Platform can transform your content management strategy, contact us today for a consultation.