Craft CMS Development
Content modeling with custom sections and Matrix fields, Twig template development, headless builds over Craft's GraphQL API, and scripted migrations from WordPress or legacy platforms — with parity verified before cutover.
What Is Craft CMS?
Craft CMS is a commercial, content-first PHP content management system built by Pixel & Tonic that gives developers full control over content modeling through custom sections, entry types, and fields, with the resulting content rendered by Twig templates in a traditional deployment or delivered headlessly over a GraphQL API. Nothing is assumed about your content until you define it: the control panel editors work in is generated from the content model you build, and the front end is markup you write rather than a theme you override.
Craft is developed by Pixel & Tonic. Product information, licensing terms, and the technical documentation live at the official site — craftcms.com and craftcms.com/docs. Webvello is an independent development partner for clients building on the platform; we are not affiliated with Pixel & Tonic.
| Platform type | Content-first PHP CMS — runs as a traditional monolith or headless |
|---|---|
| Editing interface | Craft control panel, generated from your content model, with live preview |
| Content APIs | Twig templating for server-rendered pages; GraphQL for headless delivery |
| Hosting model | Self-hosted on standard PHP hosting, or first-party Craft Cloud |
| License | Commercial — free Solo edition, paid Pro edition; current terms at craftcms.com |
| Best fit | Editorial teams that want refined authoring control and a bespoke content architecture |
| Official site | craftcms.com |
Where Craft CMS Fits
Craft is a commercially licensed PHP CMS from Pixel & Tonic, built around a content-first premise: nothing is assumed about your content until you define it. You create sections, entry types, and custom fields that describe your actual editorial model, and the control panel is generated from those definitions. Editors get an interface shaped by the content rather than a generic post editor, and developers get templating in Twig against markup they fully control.
It suits organizations whose content has real structure and whose editors publish continuously — where the constraint is editorial control and long-term maintainability, not the availability of drop-in plugins. Craft can serve pages directly through Twig, or run headless through its GraphQL API with a separately deployed frontend such as Next.js. Both are legitimate architectures; the right one depends on your team and rendering requirements.
Webvello is an AI search optimization and index engineering company, and we build the CMS platforms and integrations that work sits on top of. The expertise we bring to a Craft build is content architecture and search structure: modeling entries so they map cleanly onto schema.org entities, controlling metadata and structured data at the template level, and governing which generated pages should be indexed at all.
Sections, entry types, and fields defined around your editorial model instead of a fixed post-and-page structure.
Server-rendered Twig templates in a single deployment, or a Next.js frontend consuming Craft's GraphQL API.
No theme layer between content and output — metadata, canonicals, and structured data are template code you own.
Craft CMS Development Services
From content modeling to migration and launch — the full path into Craft
Content Architecture in Craft
Sections, entry types, and custom fields modeled around what your content actually is — services, locations, people, articles — rather than around a generic page template.
- Section and entry type design
- Custom field layouts per entry type
- Entry and category relationships
- Validation and required-field rules
Matrix & Flexible Content
Repeatable typed blocks that give editors layout freedom without letting page structure degrade into unstructured markup.
- Matrix block type design
- Reusable content components
- Editor-facing block previews
- Structured output for schema mapping
Twig Template Development
Front-end templating in Twig against markup you control, with no theme layer standing between the content model and the rendered page.
- Component-oriented Twig structure
- Eager-loaded queries for performance
- Full control of head and metadata output
- Accessible, semantic markup
Headless Craft with GraphQL
Craft's GraphQL API serving a separately deployed Next.js frontend, so editors keep the control panel while the frontend runs on the React stack.
- GraphQL schema and scope configuration
- Next.js App Router integration
- Static generation and revalidation strategies
- Preview workflows for editors
Migrations into Craft
Moving WordPress, legacy CMS, or bespoke database content into Craft entries by script, with parity verified against a documented baseline.
- Full URL and content inventory first
- Scripted, repeatable transforms
- Redirect mapping for every changed URL
- Side-by-side parity check before cutover
Entity SEO & AI Search Readiness
Structured entries map onto schema.org entities — the layer AI search systems read — which is the core of the optimization work Webvello specializes in.
- Schema.org markup generated from entry data
- Canonical and metadata control in templates
- Internal link architecture across sections
- Index governance over generated pages
How a Craft Build Runs
The same documented, verifiable process we publish in our methodology
Documented Baseline
Before anything is built, we inventory the existing site — every URL, content type, template, and metadata field — so there is a factual reference to verify the new build against.
Content Model Design
Sections, entry types, fields, and Matrix block types are designed around your real content. These structural decisions determine what the templates, the GraphQL schema, and the structured data can express.
Build & Parity Comparison
Templates or headless frontend and scripted content migration are built together, then compared side by side against the documented baseline for URLs, metadata, structured data, and redirects.
Instrumented Launch
Analytics events, structured-data validation, and redirect checks are verified before cutover, following the delivery process we publish in our methodology.
Craft CMS Development FAQ
How is Craft CMS different from WordPress?
Craft is a commercial PHP CMS built by Pixel & Tonic around content modeling rather than themes and plugins. Where WordPress starts with posts and pages and asks you to bend them into shape with custom fields and page builders, Craft starts empty: you define the sections, entry types, and fields that match your actual content, and the control panel is generated from those definitions. Templating is done in Twig against your own markup, so there is no theme layer imposing structure you then have to override. The tradeoff is that Craft is licensed software with far fewer drop-in plugins, so more of the build is deliberate rather than assembled.
What are Matrix fields used for in Craft?
A Matrix field lets an editor build a page out of repeatable, typed blocks — a text block, an image block, a quote, a comparison table — where each block type has its own defined fields. It is how Craft handles flexible layouts without resorting to a freeform page builder or raw HTML in a rich text field. Because every block is a defined type with defined fields, the content stays structured and queryable, which means the same content can be rendered in Twig, returned over GraphQL, or mapped into schema.org markup without re-parsing markup blobs.
Can Craft run headless with a Next.js frontend?
Yes. Craft exposes content over a GraphQL API, so it can serve as the content backend for a separately deployed Next.js frontend while editors keep working in the Craft control panel. We build both ways. A Twig monolith is simpler to operate and keeps templating and content in one deployment; a headless setup gives you the React ecosystem, App Router rendering strategies, and independent frontend deploys, at the cost of running and coordinating two applications. Which one is right depends on your team and your rendering requirements, not on which is newer.
What does a migration into Craft involve?
Three phases. First, a content inventory: every URL, template, content type, and metadata field on the existing site is documented as a baseline. Second, content modeling and scripted transforms — the existing data, whether a WordPress export, a database dump, or a legacy CMS API, is mapped onto Craft sections, entry types, and fields, then imported by repeatable scripts rather than manual re-entry. Third, parity verification: the new site is compared against the documented baseline for URLs, titles, metadata, structured data, and redirects before any DNS cutover, so nothing disappears silently.
What are the SEO implications of building on Craft?
Craft gives you direct control over rendered markup, which is the practical requirement for technical SEO work: titles, canonical tags, metadata, structured data, and internal link patterns are template code you own rather than plugin output you configure around. The larger advantage is structural. Content modeled as typed entries and fields maps cleanly onto schema.org entities, so a service entry can emit a Service, a location entry a Place, and an FAQ Matrix block an FAQPage — with the same source of truth. That entity-level clarity is what AI search systems and knowledge graphs consume, and it is the layer our own optimization work operates on.
How does Craft CMS compare to a headless CMS like Sanity or Strapi?
Craft can operate both ways, which is the distinction that usually matters. It renders pages itself through Twig templates in a single deployment, and it also exposes content over GraphQL so a separate frontend can consume it headlessly. Sanity and Strapi are headless-only: they store and serve structured content, and something else always renders it. Choose Craft when editors need a refined authoring experience and the site and its content model can live in one system. Choose a pure headless platform when the same content has to feed several frontends — a website, an app, a partner integration — and no single one of them should own the CMS.
Who owns the content in Craft?
You do. Craft is software you install and run, so entries, assets, and field data live in your own database on your own hosting — not in a vendor's cloud account. That means standard database dumps and asset backups are complete exports by definition, and you can move the installation between hosts without asking anyone's permission. The license governs use of the software; it does not touch ownership of what you publish with it.
What is the Craft plugin ecosystem?
Craft has an official Plugin Store at plugins.craftcms.com covering commerce, SEO, custom field types, integrations, and utilities, alongside first-party products from Pixel & Tonic such as Craft Commerce. It is deliberately smaller than the WordPress plugin directory, which changes how you should use it: we treat plugins like any other dependency — vetted for maintenance and compatibility before adoption, kept to the minimum the project actually needs, and pinned to explicit versions in Composer so an upgrade is a decision rather than a surprise.
How much does Craft CMS cost?
Craft is commercial software with a free Solo edition for single-user projects and paid licensing for the Pro edition, plus separate pricing for Craft Cloud hosting; current terms are published at craftcms.com/pricing, which is the number to check rather than any figure quoted on a third-party page. As with any CMS, licensing is rarely the dominant cost. The larger investment is content architecture, template or frontend development, and migration of existing content — the work we scope in writing before an engagement starts.
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WordPress Development
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Our Methodology
The documented process behind every engagement
Considering Craft CMS?
Tell us what your content looks like today. We'll map out the content model, the migration path, and whether Twig or headless is the right architecture before any code is written.