Headless Challenges Answered: Weather.com's Presentation Framework

"Headless Drupal" has been getting a lot of hype lately, and with good reason. Decoupling the back end from the front end can allow for a more innovative and cutting edge user experience, or different experiences across multiple devices, that still leverage Drupal's strength as a content management framework. However, a fully decoupled site comes with its own challenges. Most obviously, other things Drupal does well may be be more difficult when decoupled, like internationalization, search engine optimisation, and aliasing / routing. Further, a headless site provides no dynamic layout solution (like Blocks, or Panels) so each new page may have to go through the front end team, slowing feature velocity.

The weather.com Drupal project created the Presentation Framework in response to these challenges, to allow for an opinionated headless system that still accesses more of Drupal's power than a fully decoupled site. It facilitates rapid feature velocity by giving their front end teams have the ability to extend the existing functionality without having to learn Drupal’s APIs, all within a highly structured framework that still enforces a consistent and stable system. Meanwhile, the editorial teams can do the work they need to, creating and modifying not just content, but layouts, all within a single interface.

This session will break down in detail how we addressed these challenges, how others can benefit from our work in their own projects, and how these same challenges may be addressed in Drupal 8.