A Content Hub is a repository of data—including images, text, and other structured content—organized to make information easily accessible to users. Content hubs can aggregate data from several external sources or be managed within a single content platform, supporting use cases from knowledge bases to database-like structures. For more, see the original article.
Content Federation is the ability to bring data together from multiple sources and backends via API into a single repository, without migrating or duplicating content. In Hygraph, this is achieved by federating content from multiple sources into a single GraphQL endpoint via Remote Sources, allowing teams to access up-to-date data from multiple systems through a single API. Learn more at this article and Hygraph Documentation.
A Federated Content Hub unifies data from multiple services, APIs, and users, serving it across platforms from a single source. This approach allows organizations to aggregate and deliver content efficiently without duplicating data. Source: Hygraph Blog.
Unlike a traditional content hub, a Federated Content Platform integrates and sources content and data from any third-party systems in your stack—such as other CMSs, DAMs, PIMs, or APIs—without migrating the data. The data remains in its original source and is always up to date when accessed via Hygraph's API. More details: Federated Content Platform vs Headless CMS.
Content Federation offers several advantages:
Hygraph provides a GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, scalability, and a wide range of integrations (including Netlify, Vercel, Shopify, AWS S3, Cloudinary, and more). It also offers enterprise-grade security, SSO, audit logs, and robust documentation. For a full list, visit Hygraph Features and Hygraph Integrations.
Yes, Hygraph supports integrations with platforms such as Netlify, Vercel, Shopify, BigCommerce, AWS S3, Cloudinary, Bynder, Mux, Lokalise, Crowdin, Smartling, and more. See the full list at Hygraph Integrations.
Yes, Hygraph offers a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Learn more at the Hygraph API Reference.
Content Federation is ideal for:
Hygraph is designed for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It is especially beneficial for modern software companies, enterprises modernizing their tech stack, and brands scaling across geographies or re-platforming from traditional solutions. Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf.
Customers can expect significant business impacts, including time savings through streamlined workflows, ease of use with an intuitive interface, faster speed-to-market, and enhanced customer experience through consistent and scalable content delivery. These benefits help modernize tech stacks and improve operational efficiency. Source: ICPVersion2_Hailey.pdf.
Yes. For example, Komax achieved a 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. Explore more at Hygraph Customer Stories.
Industries include food and beverage (Dr. Oetker), consumer electronics (Samsung), automotive (AutoWeb), healthcare (Vision Healthcare), travel and hospitality (HolidayCheck), media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (Bellhop), marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. See Hygraph Case Studies.
Hygraph addresses operational pains (reducing reliance on developers for content updates, modernizing legacy tech stacks, supporting global teams, improving content creation UX), financial pains (lowering operational costs, speeding time-to-market, reducing maintenance, supporting scalability), and technical pains (simplifying development, streamlining queries, resolving cache and integration challenges). Details: Hygraph Product Page.
For developers: Hygraph reduces boilerplate code and streamlines query management. For content creators/project managers: It provides an intuitive interface for independent content updates. For business stakeholders: It lowers operational costs, supports scalability, and accelerates speed to market. More at Hygraph Product Page.
Key KPIs include: time saved on content updates, number of updates without developer intervention, system uptime, speed of deployment, content consistency across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, time to market, maintenance costs, and scalability metrics. See Hygraph CMS KPIs.
Comprehensive technical documentation is available at Hygraph Documentation, covering everything needed to build and deploy projects.
Hygraph is designed for easy onboarding. Customers can sign up for a free-forever account and use documentation, video tutorials, and onboarding guides. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months. Learn more at Hygraph Documentation and Top Villas Case Study.
Customers describe Hygraph as 'super easy to set up and use,' with an intuitive, logical interface accessible to both technical and non-technical users. Source: Customer Feedback.
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 Compliant, ISO 27001 Certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure high levels of data protection and security. More details at Hygraph Security Features.
Hygraph provides enterprise-grade security features, including SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory standards. For more, visit Hygraph Security Features.
Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For details, visit the Hygraph Pricing Page.
Hygraph provides 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to documentation, video tutorials, and a community Slack channel. More at Hygraph Contact Page.
Hygraph offers onboarding sessions for enterprise customers, training resources such as video tutorials, documentation, webinars, and Customer Success Managers for expert guidance. See Hygraph Contact Page for more.
Hygraph offers 24/7 support for maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance, and all users can access detailed documentation and the community Slack channel. Source: Hygraph Contact.
Notable customers include Sennheiser, HolidayCheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. See more at Hygraph Case Studies.
Written by Emily
on Jul 14, 2022Modern digital experiences often rely on large sets of data that work together to bring information in a structured way where users can easily interact and consume the data.
One such example is a content hub, where data is structured and aggregated in a single place to become a powerful resource for the user. In some cases, teams manually upload all of the content to the single project and update the content manually as time goes on. While this may be a good solution in the early phases of the project, it is not sustainable in the long term as more data becomes relevant. In this post, we will examine how to build a content hub using content federation, in order to easily and efficiently keep information up to date and relevant, without a time consuming workflow.
Users expect sites and applications to provide rich information around a variety of topics with information staying up to date. In creating a trusted resource around a specific topic, companies see greater user retention and a more trusted brand on the whole. One solution to this is creating a content hub.
A content hub is a repository of data, including images, text, and other structured content, organized to make them easily accessible to the user. Their information can be served from several external sources, or it can all be managed within a single content platform to ensure that the data remains easily accessible and flexible. Whether sites consist solely of a single content hub, or more commonly, content hubs occupy a single element of their site, content hubs make it easy to learn more about the ideas and concepts that are crucial to the sites wider purpose. They serve a variety of use cases, from a knowledge learning site to an almost database-like structure of articles and content.
Good content hubs are well organized and offer searchable content or thematic breakdowns that ensure that content doesn’t get lost. For content hubs to be successful, they should have high quality data that remains accurate over time. Some teams choose to handle this by manually updating the content, others keep choose to programmatically manage their data.
Content Federation is the ability to bring data together from multiple sources and backends via API, into a single repository without migrating the content or having multiple versions of it. In common experience architectures, a federated content hub serves as the “aggregation layer”.
Users have access to up-to-date data from multiple systems, but they are not able to manipulate or alter the integrity of the data. This avoids creating multiple versions of the data, ensuring that a single API is able to serve as the “source of truth” before delivering this aggregated data to one or more frontends.
With content federation, when changes to the data occur in the external source, those changes are programmatically updated in the other systems as well. This preserves the integrity of the data and helps ensure that the end user always has access to the most current information. Teams no longer have to spend valuable time migrating data to a new system and can preserve elements of the data that should not be shared with wider systems while still providing data-rich end user experiences. Similarly, frontend applications are not consuming outdated or stale data, and are constantly being kept updated programmatically.
Within Hygraph, teams are able to federate content from multiple sources into a single GraphQL endpoint via Remote Sources. The data is not copied over, instead Hygraph extends its API to source the data from multiple systems.
Content Federation is particularly useful in the case of a modern content hub because it allows teams to enrich their data from multiple sources, without the need to make changes to the content manually. Time sensitive information only needs to be updated once and reflected across anywhere the content is federated. In the case of a knowledge base, if some of the articles are coming from different sources, they can be federated into a single Hygraph project, where they are programmatically updated as changes occur.
Content hubs can be a simple way to improve user experience and build a centralized place for content. The creation and maintenance of a content hub can be cumbersome since in many cases teams are migrating existing content into a new project, meaning it may live in multiple places. While this may be okay for smaller use-cases where content does not change often, it is not a sufficient approach for content operations with higher demands, such as inventory management, global knowledge management, or metadata management. Building a content hub with content federation, however, ensures that the data is accurate and that the system can cover a broader set of use cases. This is most noticeable when adopting a composable architecture powered by content federation. This type of architecture makes it possible to create flexible, scalable integrations across systems.
With content federation, teams are able to access the most up-to-date information around a topic, and have that be reflected on their site. This is critical for data which changes often such as product offerings, inventory, availability, prices, and weather. With a more rigid approach, teams are not able to create workarounds with data that must be updated often or risk the data becoming stale. Content federation removes this roadblock and ensures that data is accurate at all times.
With content federation, there is a single source of truth for data. Instead of data being copied into multiple systems, which requires manual work and increases the likelihood of inaccuracy, content programmatically flows into a single flexible endpoint. With content federation, teams can determine how much control the other team members should have and what information they should have access too. This ensures that data is not accidentally mutated or that restricted content is not shared across the wider team.
Content federation enables the seamless flow of data between multiple sources. This also includes 3rd Party APIs, such as public databases or weather reports. Instead of relying on manually migrating the data or using webhooks to fetch the data, content federation creates a flow of information that is accurate and more flexible than using webhooks. For example, Hygraph is able to federate content from multiple APIs, regardless of whether they’re GraphQL or RESTful, and “GraphQLify” them into a single endpoint.
Teams no longer have to rely on time consuming migrations or manual updates. Instead of spending time updating changes in product offerings or creating custom scripts to do this job, teams can spend more time creating new campaigns or building more ways for users to interact with the data, since the content is being programmatically sourced from remote APIs using API Extensions.
Using content federation, teams now have the ability to tackle more data-rich use cases that require multiple sources of content and incorporate live data. In the context of content hubs, teams can provide a more engaging experience by ensuring that the information is up-to-date and that more data can be used in a single content hub, without becoming cumbersome to the development or content teams.
Data-rich content repositories are helpful in a broad range of contexts. With content federation, teams have an easier time incorporating new use cases into a modern set of tooling and reducing the manual work. We’ll take a look at some of these use cases here.
Using content federation, teams are able to bring together multiple sources of inventory, prices, and other relevant data together to build a performant application. With the frontends querying a single endpoint, teams can have confidence that their information is accurate and that the site will be performant. Providing a data-rich experience to their users without multiple requests or data round-trips allows applications to focus on providing better user experiences. Taking the example of a popular travel metasearch like Skyscanner, flight prices and availabilities can be queried from multiple GDS, marketing content can be added from the content platform, and booking information can be provided by booking platforms, allowing all information to be aggregated into one API query.
Performance and data accuracy are critical for wealth management use cases such as stock portfolios. New digital competitors can enrich their experiences with information around news updates and other factors to build a single, data-rich API. Using the example of a popular portal like Yahoo! Finance, a single application can source for ticker news from stock exchanges, company updates from news sources, and predictions from AI APIs, aggregate them into a single endpoint, and serve them from a single GraphQL query.
Knowledge management, such as web portals or internal knowledge bases, benefit from a reduction in manual workflows and reliable data integrity due to content federation. Content hubs built without content federation are more likely to have less relevant information or have content that becomes more stale over time. Teams ensure data accuracy and performance with content being aggregated on the frontend via a single API.
eCommerce and Product Inventory management is possible using content federation to bring together data from multiple systems into a single API. Teams benefit from having all of the data aggregated in a single place without having to migrate it to a CMS or additional platform. This allows teams to build workflows that programmatically populate some content, while relying on manual workflows for marketing content, while still delivering a single API to the frontend. Taking the example of an online retailer like Prym, all marketing content created in Hygraph can be enriched by data coming in from the PIM, Personalization API, Commerce API, and CRM, before being delivered to the frontend from a unified GraphQL API.
To experience content federation in practice and to learn more about how federating APIs can accelerate your next project, check out our documentation or reach out to request an enterprise trial.
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