We need to rethink what we mean by "website," the purpose of a CMS, and the role of the designer when architecting a web system. We will discuss:

• The tension between a design and a CMS. Should your design be optimized for your CMS? Or should you modify your CMS to achieve your design? In other words, are you walking the dog, or is the dog walking you?
• "Headless Drupal": Drupal as a backend with alternate frontends. Drupal's theming layer is difficult to master and expensive to upgrade between major releases. We will discuss how the frontend and backend can be decoupled to provide better experiences for users, developers, and designers alike.
• The future of the CMS and how you can "future proof" your web project and process. For example, we will discuss when a CMS should be "decoupled" so that the frontend and backend are entirely separate.
• The role of designers in a web project. Drupal's theme layer is very flexible and can accommodate just about any design. It's important for designers to remember, however, that they're not really creating a page — they're building a complete system to house the all of the site's content and functionality.

Get ready for some really big, innovative ideas! For a preview of this session, check out The Future of the CMS, a lunchtime session we presented during -- but not officially part of -- DrupalCon Austin. Slides are also available.

About the speaker

Todd Nienkerk is a Digital Strategist and Partner at Four Kitchens. He and the other Web Chefs spend their days making big websites. Todd often serves as a mentor for other companies within the web industry, especially within the world of open source. In the last five years, Todd has spoken more than 40 events across North America and Europe, including dozens of DrupalCamps, most DrupalCons, and SXSW Interactive two years in a row.