Front End Options

Now that we’re able to manage content with Craft CMS, it’s time to build a front end presentation for visitors.

Craft CMS supports two distinctly different ways of building a front end:

  1. Monolithic: building Twig templates for server-generated pages.
  2. Headless: using a GraphQL API in conjunction with a separate front end codebase.

Since Craft is a hybrid CMS, you can combine monolithic and headless features to suit your project—or even just for learning.

Craft Pro (opens new window) is required to use the GraphQL API. You can try Craft Pro locally without any time limit, but you’ll need to upgrade your license if you use it in production.

We’ll continue building Twig templates for the tutorial, and you may want to follow along even if you plan on using Craft CMS headless since the concepts are the same.