DEV Community

Discussion on: Best Headless CMS for 2020

Collapse
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

I am very confused by "serverless". How do you host a website without a server? Where does the content come from if it's not served from somewhere?

Collapse
 
eppak profile image
Alessandro Cappellozza

There is some that can be installed in lambda services like aws or firebase. Some cannot like strapi.

Collapse
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

Sorry for being slow, but I don't understand how that makes them serverless. Is "serverless" being used as a synonym for "headless", i.e. it has no user interface?

Thread Thread
 
anras573 profile image
Anders Bo Rasmussen

Serverless basic means that you don't care about the server. You write a function (Azure), or a lambda (aws), and the provider handle the server for you.

Thread Thread
 
grasmachien profile image
grasmachien

It just means that the templates are not being rendered on the server but rather on the front end by doing an Ajax call to the server and then fill in the data with JS.
So it's serverless ... with a server :)
And of course the website still has to be hosted on a server as well.
The serverless name makes no sense at all.
Even if you host it on aws or firebase it still acts as a server.

Collapse
 
jannikwempe profile image
Jannik Wempe • Edited

It is a common misconception about "serverless". Of course you are right: You don't actually host a website without a server.

Quote from Wikipedia:

Serverless computing is a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider runs the server, and dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources.

It is about some provider manages the server and it's allocations. In "serverless" you don't have a fixed server with a fixed IP but a dynamically managed server.

In my opinion "serverless" therefore is a misleading description.

EDIT: Think about you being "serveless" rather than the application.

Collapse
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

Ah! OK, thank you. So it's not about not having a server, but about not caring about the server. Got it.

Thread Thread
 
jannikwempe profile image
Jannik Wempe

You got it :)
Btw: I was thinking exactly the same for a time...