A new year is upon us and with a new year means new possibilities… and it seems perfect timing to start this series…

If we look at the last 12+ months, it would be hard to argue that things have stood still in the world of Tech, and even more specifically in the more narrow field that is the Web!  Some seismic events or we could go as far as say fundamental shifts have and are happening in tech, with the web. On the surface, if you just look at that these individually or even together, you could think that they would be a nail in all traditional CMS platforms: you would be quite incorrect! 

This series will investigate why traditional CMSes are still quite relevant and fundamental and why some of the latest shifts can be actually positive for traditional CMSs with some adaptations, adoptions or a sprinkle of modernization – some of these adaptations and/or adoptions have already started taking place.

So what are these events or shifts that I’m talking about exactly, I see 3 fundamental ones:

1. Headless Architectures

2. Low-Code / No-Co

 and 3. AI

1. Headless Architectures

Let’s look at this Headless Architectures creature for a moment…

For those unfamiliar with the concept, basically a Headless CMS is a backend‑only content management system that exposes content exclusively via APIs and does not include a built‑in presentation layer or theming system at all or said differently is a content repository where editors manage content (text, images, etc) through a dashboard, and APIs deliver that content to custom frontends. This gives you more flexibility but needs more developer expertise. And while headless CMSs have made their mark and gained in popularity, they have not come close to taking over the CMS landscape and I don’t think they ever will.

FUN FACT:

Did you know that your favorite Joomla! can work in hybrid-headless mode thanks to its Framework and API!

Joomla!'s Web Services API (introduced in Joomla! 4, enhanced in Joomla! 5 and beyond) delivers content as JSON. You can build a separate frontend with React, Vue, Next.js, or PWAs (and other options) that fetches and displays this data.

This approach works like a pure headless CMS, but Joomla! keeps its traditional admin dashboard for editing, security, and user management — making it a practical, familiar hybrid option.

2. Low-Code / No-Code

While Headless CMSes require more development and tech knowledge, somewhere on the opposite side of the technology balance, you have low-code/no-code solutions…

If you're new to the topic, Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) platforms let non-developers (and those who are developers) build apps, websites, or automations using visual drag-and-drop interfaces or pre-made templates usually around workflows with minimal (low-code) or zero (no-code) traditional coding knowledge needed.

While these tools are of tremendous help and can save an insane amount of time (I recently saved a client over 650 hrs a year with just 19 automation workflows), and therefore worth incorporating for sure, they can have some limitations or be a bit more fragile to change than at first glance - but that’s a topic for another article ;).

There are both open-source and proprietary LCNC platforms and if speaking specifically of LCNC automation platforms, the smallest has around 200 modules/integrations and the largest have more than 9000+ modules/integrations.

 These platforms open up a great number of possibilities in general but also to CMSes to transform data, get data in and out of Joomla!, connect disparate systems and so much more…

3. AI

In today’s modern iteration, AI can be thought of computer services, software, or tools, that can “think,” learn, and create in ways that mimic human intelligence, especially in understanding and producing language and media - with a bit of artistic hallucination that complicates the quality of its results. As results go, the improvements are vast and even if for certain tasks AI excels, there are still plenty of areas where it isn’t anytime soon going to take over our jobs and yet... it is already starting to change fundamentally how people interact with the digital world...

During the time it took to write this article (started over the holidays), I came across actual not just theoretical effect of AI doing harm even to an open source+ model... Since more and more users are using AI enhanced or generated search (think: Perplexity, ChatGPT etc etc) to replace traditional search engines (think: Google, DuckDuckGo, etc), and most people don't go to the source pages nearly as much or at all anymore, they are missing out on what is on those website pages that the AI didn't expose as information beyond what 'answers' the AI considered would answer more or less well their query. Specifically, let's say you use an open source solution which also has a commercial offering or paid support etc, the AI replies to your inquiry around the open source solution and you never see the information on the webpage that lets you know about their paid support, or commercial extensions or etc... but if the open source project lives in part from the money generated by the paid support or commercial extensions that puts that entire project in real jeopardy!

 I'm not talking about Joomla! here or another CMS but how has AI or will AI affect traditional CMSs and the entire open source eco-system?

Back more specifically to AI and CMSs, it's a mixed bag, there are areas where AI can be of definite help and there are areas which are much more dangerous to have AI take over. I think of AI as at times a 1st year assistant and at others an almost learned colleague (that I still need to check the work of just for peace of mind).

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In terms of rough chronology, these 3 significant evolutions arrive in order:

Headless Architectures
Low-Code / No-Code
AI

While Headless CMS concepts emerged earlier than 2018, they gained significant mainstream traction starting around 2018, reaching a notable peak in adoption and market share by 2021.

Low-Code / No-Code solutions, which trace their roots in the 1970s-1990s 😳, gained a bit of  momentum in 2010s but didn’t really accelerate significantly until the post pandemic years of 2022 to early 2024… they are among the fastest growing sectors of Tech today.

And while AI has even older roots than Low-Code/No-Code, tracing its beginning back to the 1940s-1950s 😱, it went into deep hibernation in 1970s - 2000s+, to start to resurface in the 2010s while not having a significant, tectonic level displacement effect until post-2022 thanks to among other things transformers and GPT models. AI is the fastest growing sector of the Tech industry in 2025 and expected to lead growth until at least 2030.

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In the next episodes, we will look deeper under the surface on how Low-Code/No-Code and AI can help Joomla! do more, be easier to manage or do every day tasks… Change is rarely negative, it’s more about being capable of adapting to it and selective about what you choose to use where, when and how often…