arrow Products
Glide CMS image Glide CMS image
Glide CMS arrow
The powerful intuitive headless CMS for busy content and editorial teams, bursting with features and sector insight. MACH architecture gives you business freedom.
Glide Go image Glide Go image
Glide Go arrow
Enterprise power at start-up speed. Glide Go is a pre-configured deployment of Glide CMS with hosting and front-end problems solved.
Glide Nexa image Glide Nexa image
Glide Nexa arrow
Audience authentication, entitlements, and preference management in one system designed for publishers and content businesses.
For your sector arrow arrow
Media & Entertainment
arrow arrow
Built for any content to thrive, whomever it's for. Get content out faster and do more with it.
Sports & Gaming
arrow arrow
Bring fans closer to their passions and deliver unrivalled audience experiences wherever they are.
Publishing
arrow arrow
Tailored to the unique needs of publishing so you can fully focus on audiences and content success.
For your role arrow arrow
Technology
arrow arrow
Unlock resources and budget with low-code & no-code solutions to do so much more.
Editorial & Content
arrow arrow
Make content of higher quality quicker, and target it with pinpoint accuracy at the right audiences.
Developers
arrow arrow
MACH architecture lets you kickstart development, leveraging vast native functionality and top-tier support.
Commercial & Marketing
arrow arrow
Speedrun ideas into products, accelerate ROI, convert interest, and own the conversation.
Technology Partners arrow arrow
Explore Glide's world-class technology partners and integrations.
Solution Partners arrow arrow
For workflow guidance, SEO, digital transformation, data & analytics, and design, tap into Glide's solution partners and sector experts.
Industry Insights arrow arrow
News
arrow arrow
News from inside our world, about Glide Publishing Platform, our customers, and other cool things.
Comment
arrow arrow
Insight and comment about the things which make content and publishing better - or sometimes worse.
Expert Guides
arrow arrow
Essential insights and helpful resources from industry veterans, and your gateway to CMS and Glide mastery.
Newsletter
arrow arrow
The Content Aware weekly newsletter, with news and comment every Thursday.
Knowledge arrow arrow
Customer Support
arrow arrow
Learn more about the unrivalled customer support from the team at Glide.
Documentation
arrow arrow
User Guides and Technical Documentation for Glide Publishing Platform headless CMS, Glide Go, and Glide Nexa.
Developer Experience
arrow arrow
Learn more about using Glide headless CMS, Glide Go, and Glide Nexa identity management.

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
D2H1B4 High-tech editing suite at BBC Global News newsroom, British Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, United Kingdom

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.

Latest articles

A glass hammer is not good for the job
Like a glass hammer, headless WordPress is a bad idea
arrow button
Don't let old technology and systems slow your progress
Product teams: How to build faster, test quicker, and launch more with your CMS
arrow button
"The content's fine but we need to speed up output."
Editorial teams: How to get a better CMS and better results
arrow button

Ready to get started?

No matter where you are on your CMS journey, we're here to help. Want more info or to see Glide Publishing Platform in action? We got you.

Book a demo