The term “headless CMS” gets used loosely enough that it has started to lose meaning in some conversations. Publishers evaluating content infrastructure deserve a clear definition, a realistic picture of the tradeoffs, and an honest sense of when the architecture is actually the right fit. What “Headless” Means A traditional CMS — WordPress, Drupal, Joomla — couples content management with content presentation. The system stores your posts in a database, applies templates to them, and renders HTML pages.