Built on a proven content strategy. Not on a wish list.
Our roadmap follows the principles of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper – the standard work on structured, reusable content. Big enterprise platforms sell these ideas at enterprise prices. We are bringing them to shared hosting, for free.
Why a book on content strategy?
Most CMS roadmaps are driven by feature requests. Ours is driven by a question: What does content need to be reusable, consistent and ready for any channel?
Rockley and Cooper answered that question years ago: model your content before you build anything, separate content from format, reuse instead of copy-paste, and support all of it with clear workflows and metadata. LessHeadCMS starts where the book starts – with the content model – and we are working through the rest, one principle at a time.
LessHeadCMS is an independent open-source project. The authors and publisher of the book are not affiliated with it and have not endorsed it.
Already in LessHeadCMS
The foundation the book asks for is already there.
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Your content model is a diagram
Draw a PlantUML class diagram – get a database, a REST API and an editorial UI. The model is the configuration.
Content modeling@startuml class Article { + title: string {title} + slug: string {unique} + body: richtext } class Author { + name: string } Article "n" --> "1" Author : written by @enduml -
Structure that is enforced
Required fields, enums, uniqueness and minimum counts are checked by the system, not left to good intentions.
Structured content -
Content without format
Headless API and Markdown instead of layout-bound HTML. Your frontend decides how it looks.
Content ≠ format -
Workflows for roles, not people
Approval states and task assignments go to groups and roles – and every workflow can be viewed as a diagram.
Workflow design -
Permissions down to the field
Decide who may see or change which entity and which field.
Access control -
Safe schema changes
Change the model on a live installation: diff analysis, automatic backup, renames without data loss.
Governance -
Media reuse
Use one file in many places, see where it is used, replace it everywhere at once.
Content reuse -
Multilingual
Translate the editorial UI into any language; model multilingual content with a simple pattern.
Localization -
Automatic tracking metadata
Every record knows who created and changed it, and when.
Tracking metadata Shipped Oct 2026 -
Revision history
See every version of a record, compare changes side by side and restore older versions.
Version control Shipped Oct 2026 -
Richer validation
Length limits, value ranges and reusable patterns per field – defined in the diagram, e.g.
Semantic structure Shipped Oct 2026{maxLength: 140}for a teaser. Enforced in the editing form and the API alike; tightened rules never touch existing data but list the records that need attention. -
Webhooks
Trigger a rebuild of your static site or any other system when content is saved or a workflow step is completed.
Automated delivery Shipped Oct 2026
What's coming
No dates, no vaporware. Features move from Later to Now as the ones they build on are finished.
Now
In development-
Writing guidelines in the form
Notes in your diagram become help texts next to the fields. Your model doubles as your editorial handbook.
Guided authoring
Next
Up next-
Ordered references
Put referenced records in a fixed order, the first step towards assembling pages from reusable components.
Information product models -
“Where is this used?”
See every place a record is referenced before you change it.
Where-used reporting -
Drafts alongside published content
Work on a new version while the published one stays live until it is approved.
Draft and release versions -
Outdated translations
When the source text changes, its translations are flagged automatically.
Source-to-translation relationships -
Edit conflict protection
Nobody silently overwrites someone else's changes.
Check-in / check-out -
Model templates
Ready-made content models – recipe, product description, glossary term and more – as readable diagrams.
Component models
Later
On the roadmap-
Workflow notifications and deadlines
E-mail notifications, due dates and escalation.
Workflow -
Scheduled publishing
Publish and unpublish content at a set time, even on shared hosting without cron jobs.
Content lifecycle -
Model documentation
Generate a readable content catalog from your diagram.
Content models as catalog -
Comments
Discuss a record right where it lives.
Collaborative review -
Taxonomy tools
Facet filters and merging of terms.
Controlled vocabulary -
Channel variants
Mark fields for web, mobile or print; each channel gets only what it needs.
Adaptive content
Show all 12
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Flexible block lists
Build pages from mixed, reorderable content blocks.
Information product models -
Derived content
Create a variant of a record that stays linked to its source and tells you when the source changes.
Derivative reuse -
Snippets and variables
Reuse a disclaimer or a product name inside any text.
Fragment and variable reuse -
Reports
Status, workload and overdue tasks at a glance.
Content reporting -
Rule-based routing
Send content to the right reviewers automatically.
Rules-based workflow -
Releases
Freeze and roll back the state of a whole site.
Editions
On request
Useful for some projects, not for most. Tell us if you need one of these.
- Document import with automatic splitting
- Duplicate-content finder
- Electronic signatures
- Translation memory integration