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We stand on shoulders. And at the bar.

Same Apply Agency. Here are the people we owe a nod, and the bits we have to answer for ourselves.

Apply Agency Original
Apply Agency’s own look. Kind. Skilled. Hardworking. With black as the workhorse and a little colour in the personality.
Tokyo Night
A tribute to Omarchy, DHH and the community. The theme was created by Enkia; the palette here is inspired by folke’s TokyoNight port. They took the night shift. We brought the colours to work.
Sea swim & oat latte
Our own blend of sea air, blue ink and soft corners. For anyone who was in the sea at six this morning and would quite like to mention it.
Pistachio with a misprint
Our own palette with warm paper, green tones and Georgia in the headings. Like a small design magazine that has been given access to production.
Lars’ Friday theme
Our own cocktail, mixed for Lars: blue and white with a nod to F.C. København, lime in the glass and FREITAG by Magnus Millang on the stereo. Lars picked the theme. The calendar will have to fall in line.

Under the bonnet: Geist, Geist Mono and Geist Pixel from Vercel, plus Georgia as a system font. Adapted for Apply Agency with Codex. We take responsibility for the names ourselves.

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Perspective 3 min read

A CMS is no longer an organisational investment. It is just a frame around your content.

The portal, the integrations and the agents live somewhere else. The CMS has to keep the content tidy and expose it without fuss. Choose it accordingly.

Kristian Corr Thrane

Senior Software Developer and Head of Technology

  • CMS
  • Architecture

There was a time when choosing a CMS was a decision for the executive board. You bought a platform, set up a programme, appointed a steering committee and sent the editorial team on a course. Three years later you were live, and the organisation had bent itself around the system along the way.

That is no longer how it is. Or rather: That is no longer how it has to be.

What a CMS actually does

Strip away the marketing, and a CMS does three things: it holds a content model, gives editors a place to write and exposes the content to those who need to use it, typically through an API these days.

Those are important things, but that is also all. The customer portal, the self-service, the integrations with line-of-business systems and the agents that have to answer customers live somewhere else. They read from the CMS, but they do not live in it.

When did it change?

Three things happened at roughly the same time.

  • The frontend moved out of the CMS. The site, the app and the portal are now built as independent products that fetch content through an API. The CMS has become one data source among several.
  • The cost of switching fell. When content sits in a structured model with an API, you can move it. Nobody did that voluntarily back when templates, logic and content sat together in one installation.
  • AI arrived. Agents and search read content through the same API. They do not care which logo is on the login page. They do care whether the content model is clean.

Choose it as a frame

When the CMS is a frame around the content, it should be chosen as a frame. Not as a strategy.

That means three questions instead of an 80-page tender:

  1. Does the content model fit what we actually have? Not what we dream of having.
  2. Will the editors use it without hating it?
  3. What does it cost to get out again?

Umbraco, Sitecore and DatoCMS answer the three questions differently. The answer is not the same for everyone, and that is precisely the point.

What we are not saying

We are not saying the CMS does not matter. A poor content model costs you for years, and an editorial team that does not like its tool stops writing. Choose carefully.

Nor are we saying it applies to everyone. A media house with a hundred editors and deadlines every fifteen minutes has a CMS that is the whole organisation’s tool. But most organisations are not a media house. They have a website, a portal and content that needs to be easy to find.

So where does the investment go?

Into what users need to be able to do themselves. Into the portal, where the customer logs in and gets something done. Into the integrations with the systems where the truth lives. Into the agents that have to answer correctly and act with restraint.

That is where the organisation should spend its attention. The CMS just has to be good enough to keep the content tidy and expose it without fuss.

And if someone invites you to a kickoff for “the CMS project” with cake and a steering committee, kindly ask which product is actually being built. You can keep the cake.