CrafterCMS Architecture: Key Principles and Benefits

CrafterCMS offers a cutting-edge architecture that uniquely combines decoupled authoring and delivery, true headless API-first support, and complete flexibility in deployment models. In this article, we’ll explore CrafterCMS’s architecture to understand what makes it so flexible and scalable and the benefits it can yield for enterprises.

Why CMS Architecture Matters

Retailers, e-commerce merchants, and media/entertainment companies need their websites to be able to scale to meet spikes in traffic at peak times. Financial services companies need to know that their websites are secure and that their customers won’t have to worry about personally identifiable information being leaked. 

For enterprises across all industries, the choice of CMS architecture can significantly impact their ability to effectively provide their customers with the best experience. It impacts scalability, flexibility, security, efficiency, user experience, and cost-effectiveness. 

A well-architected CMS enables enterprises to innovate, grow, and maintain a competitive edge while allowing them to deliver the best experience for their customers. Here are some of the benefits:

• Performance: The right CMS architecture enables businesses to manage growth, whether that means more content assets, increased users or traffic, and maintaining performance throughout. 
• Flexibility: A flexible CMS architecture allows for customization and integration with other systems, ensuring the CMS can adapt to changing business requirements
• Security: A secure CMS architecture offers robust data protection, access control, and compliance with industry standards and regulations.

Characteristics of CrafterCMS’s Architecture

CrafterCMS is an enterprise-grade CMS for building large-scale, high-performance, and ultra-secure sites and apps. Its robust architecture offers several characteristics, making it the perfect choice for companies across every industry. 

Headless

CrafterCMS is an enterprise-grade headless CMS that facilitates the creation of personalized content experiences across multiple channels. This includes websites, mobile apps, digital kiosks, VR & AR devices, and almost any other imaginable channel. CrafterCMS accomplishes this while meeting the needs of content authors, software developers, and IT operations. These teams can collaborate seamlessly to create exceptional digital experiences for their customers.

Decoupled

CrafterCMS is a decoupled CMS that separates content authoring from content delivery. Unlike headless CMSs claiming to be decoupled, a truly enterprise-decoupled CMS maintains separate authoring and delivery instances. CrafterCMS’s true enterprise-grade decoupling separates not only the frontend UI from the backend, but also (more importantly) the content authoring system from the content delivery systems. 

Git-based

As a Git-based CMS, CrafterCMS leverages a decentralized Git repository. This uses files stored in Git, and changes are first pushed to the repository, which then, through various mechanisms, triggers updates on the website or app. 

By leveraging Git as its content repository, CrafterCMS users benefit from Git’s version control capabilities. This enables easy rollbacks, content auditing, and branching and ensures compatibility with modern Git-based workflows, DevOps processes, and tools.

Cloud-Native

CrafterCMS is a cloud-native CMS or SaaS CMS hosted in the cloud. Designed to be deployed in the cloud, on AWS, or any other cloud provider, CrafterCMS provides the flexibility and adaptability to meet modern business needs. It offers serverless and stateless content delivery, elastic scalability, and flexible deployment options for all cloud vendors. This includes a private SaaS option for organizations that need to manage their own infrastructure. 

Composable 

CrafterCMS offers composable architecture and a modular content management system comprising various individual components. The platform adheres to the principles of composability, allowing businesses to choose the tools that best meet their unique requirements, resulting in greater flexibility and business agility. 

CrafterCMS comprises various packaged business capabilities, including integrations content modules, microservices, APIs, widgets, and other elements. It also includes a plug-in framework that empowers developers to swiftly create and maintain reusable components and backend integrations, enabling content teams to craft engaging digital experiences.

Server-side Support

CrafterCMS also supports server-side rendered (SSR) applications, providing comprehensive support for server-side development. It offers native Java and Groovy support and seamless integrations with Node, Next.js, or any other JavaScript-based server-side rendering platform. 

Java-based Backend

CrafterCMS's backed is written in Java and uses the Spring Framework along with multiple Java libraries and tools. It allows enterprises to run high performance content experiences while benfiting from robust application infrastructure support. This allows developer teams to focus on custom frontends and business logic while relying on a reliable backend. 

Additionally, this means that CrafterCMS isn’t tied to a specific deployment environment but can run on Linux or Windows and be deployed on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or dedicated infrastructure.

Distributed Repositories

CrafterCMS’s unique support for the DevContentOps process means developers can automatically push code to production and pull live data back to development environments (i.e., “Code Forward, Content Back”). 

Most CMS database-centric repositories require tedious import/export processes to move content between environments because they sit on top of traditional databases. In contrast, CrafterCMS’s Git-based content repository system facilitates content versioning control because it’s built to move both code and content easily amongst decentralized repositories.

Traditional Deployment

Companies can deploy CrafterCMS with a traditional infrastructure in the cloud or on-premise. If they want more control and monitoring over their infrastructure than AWS Lambda provides, there’s also native support for containerized deployment and orchestration with tools like Docker and Kubernetes.

Serverless Deployment

On-demand elasticity is the key to cost-effective infrastructure management and planet-wide scaling. CrafterCMS’s serverless architecture removes the need to manage servers or local storage. Crafter Engine has diskless support, meaning it can run in a stateless container on AWS Lambda, which automatically scales computing resources as needed.

Planet-wide Dynamic Content

While many CMSs encourage using content delivery networks (CDNs) for faster response times worldwide, CDNs limit the potential for dynamic content. Instead, CrafterCMS allows companies to deploy the subsystems closest to their users. Companies can deploy Crafter Authoring near their marketing and content creator teams and Crafter Engine wherever their end-users are worldwide. Crafter’s decoupled architecture makes this possible. 

How CrafterCMS’s Architecture Benefits Enterprises

There are several layers to CrafterCMS’s architecture, which can provide notable advantages for enterprise businesses.

Easy Scalability

CrafterCMS offers a scalable and globally distributed infrastructure using an in-memory database and OpenSearch. With seamless container orchestration and Kubernetes support, CrafterCMS gives global enterprises the tools needed for elastic scalability, allowing new servers to be launched anywhere in the world to start delivering content.

Robust Security

CrafterCMS adheres to stringent security assessment protocols, conducting regular audits and vulnerability checks to mitigate the top security threats. In addition to providing disaster recovery and backup capabilities, CrafterCMS actively collaborates with the CVE Program, a leading consortium of experts dedicated to identifying, describing, and cataloging publicly disclosed vulnerabilities.

Customizability

CrafterCMS offers a composable and customizable CMS that allows businesses to integrate several different systems using APIs. However, with CrafterCMS, enterprises can avoid over granularity and the increased overhead and performance slowdowns that come with too many added vendors. For example, enterprises don’t need to add Algolia for search capabilities since CrafterCMS offers OpenSearch built-in. 

Productivity Benefits for Enterprises

CrafterCMS enables enterprises to be productive by breaking down silos between content authors and developers while also allowing each group to operate independently. This improves collaboration and flexibility, allowing teams to reach annual goals and launch new marketing campaigns quickly.

• Authoring: Content authors are able to use CrafterCMS to accomplish marketing tasks faster and easier as they’re armed with the tools they need. No more silos and interruptions waiting for developers, enabling teams to achieve their goals.
• Developers: Developers can take advantage of CrafterCMS’s robust APIs, assortment of integrations, and Git-based and composable architecture, which enables faster development cycles so that teams can launch new applications at scale.
• Operations: With CrafterCMS, operations teams can benefit from the cost-effectiveness of flexible deployment and robust security measures. 

With a robust, scalable, and flexible architecture, CrafterCMS can support companies in several ways. Learn more about CrafterCMS in our webinar: Introducing CrafterCMS v4.0.