Using Craft CMS beyond the website
If you've ever read this blog, you know how much I go on about how flexible Craft CMS is as a platform.
Over the years, we've used it on all kinds of projects that go beyond a normal website you may associate a CMS with.
Apple News
We partner with Apple News in the US to build out campaigns for partners around the world, and apart from hand-made custom articles they're all powered by Craft's rich CMS.
Chatbots / MCPs
An emerging area that we're doing a lot of work in these days. Using Craft's content models we can build chat bots and expose MCPs for tools like Claude or ChatGPT to speak to the site.
Voice assistants
We've used Craft CMS to power things like Alexa Skills. Ask it some questions and Alexa replies back with content from the website. A bit old hat now, but pretty fun.
Events
We worked with Arts University Bournemouth and our friends at Bond & Coyne to create a mobile webapp where students could upload selfies from the graduation day, and have them appear on the big screen behind the stage (with all sorts of moderation and good stuff, of course) in a 3D visualisation.
As a platform
We run a lot of services for our various clients, and many of them route through a Craft CMS install that we use to provide AI and other APIs to our various CMS'.
Portals
We've used Craft CMS to build user portals including subscription services for Mob (one of the best food sites out there!) and B2Bs, adding interactivity and personalisation to sites.
Apps
We've used Craft CMS to power iPhone apps. We've got one in the works at the moment which takes the Craft pages and content, but swaps certain elements out to make them feel like a full-fledged app and an elevated experience.
Most of our work is making websites with Craft CMS, but one of Craft's super powers is it's not actually a website CMS, it's a CMS in its rawest form. What we choose to do with that content is entirely up to us.
Andrew is Technical Director at Mutual, a Craft CMS Partner agency. He has been building with Craft CMS since its public beta in 2012 — working through every major version from Craft 1 to Craft 5 — and has delivered over 100 sites for clients including Apple, Transparency International, and Arts University Bournemouth.
He writes about Craft CMS on the Mutual blog and has contributed to net Magazine. At Mutual, he leads development of Mutual One, a marketing platform built on Craft CMS as its foundation.
He has spoken about Craft CMS to undergraduate students at the University of Brighton and Canterbury Christ Church University, and appeared on the Devmode.fm podcast. He has also trained other developers on working with the platform.
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