Newsletter #17: headless or not headless, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and David Beckham's documentary

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

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Last week, I went to an amazing Shopify event in Paris: the ShopiShopaShow Apps Edition. This event was organized by Christophe Davy, a French Shopify consultant.

It revolved around 10 Shopify apps made in France: participants had the opportunity to talk to their founders, get a demo of the apps and ask questions.

100+ people attended the event. I had a great time seeing my friends in the ecosystem, as well as meeting people I had only ever seen through video calls.

Finally (you know me by now), the food was great. Christophe blessed us with a buffet of tomato mozzarella sticks, goat cheese, bread, pizza slices, charcuterie and little desserts. Absolutely yummy.

My brother even popped by at the end to meet my friends. It was super cool to introduce him to people I’ve been talking to him about for months. They welcomed him with open arms and we all had drinks together. It’s always a special feeling when two different circles meet, it almost made me emotional.

In today's edition, we're discussing headless or not headless, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and David Beckham's documentary.

Let's dive in.

Work

Do you remember last week when I wrote about the Danish clothes brand Rains and how much I liked their online store?

Following that edition, I received an email from Sam Loomes, the founder of Good City, the digital studio which designed Rains’s online store. How amazing! We had a video call to chat about Shopify, design and his vision for Good City. I had such a good time! I look forward to seeing their upcoming projects.

I would also like to give a special shout out to Grafikr, the Shopify Plus agency which did a great job at bringing those designs to life for Rains. Congrats!

Now, let’s discuss our Work topic of the day: headless or not headless.

“Headless” refers to an architecture where the backend of a Shopify store is separated from its frontend. Whilst the backend is handled inside Shopify (adding products, collections, metafields, etc.), the frontend is built in a custom way using technologies such as NextJS, Hydrogen (Shopify’s stack for headless commerce), etc.

The main arguments we often hear in favor of headless are customization, flexibility, performance, omni-channel integration, content management, SEO, cross-platform compatibility, third-party integrations and developer friendliness.

However, Shopify is moving so fast and has improved so much recently that the number of use cases for headless have now diminished.

For example, features like sections everywhere, metaobjects and store contextualization have turned the theme customizer into a very powerful tool. There are also the new BtoB and enterprise features, as well as Liquid’s improvements towards better performance.

The Shopify we know today is nothing compared to the Shopify we knew 5 years ago. Just like it’s nothing compared to the Shopify we will know in 5 years.

On Twitter, one of the current debates in the Shopify sphere consists in analyzing a headless store and answering one question: could this have been done natively within Shopify?

In several cases, the answer seems to be yes, which opens the door to some trolling and funny memes. I say “seems to be yes” because looking at a storefront only gives partial information. We don’t know the business specifics so we can’t judge the technical decision.

Anyway, it’s good to remember one thing: headless and native Shopify are not in a fight against each other.

Those are just two tools which come with their own advantages, drawbacks and specific use cases.

Choosing headless for the sake of it is a bad choice. However, choosing headless because you want to build a CtoC marketplace, or because you have a team of 20+ developers who are well versed in JavaScript and already have their own internal processes, is a great choice. It all depends on the use case.

Finally, let’s not forget that headless is still connected to the Shopify ecosystem. No, you don’t have access to the public Shopify apps which don’t have an API. But you do have access to checkout extensibility as you are still using Shopify’s checkout. Also, if you are building your headless store with Hydrogen, you can benefit from a growing number of integrations with services such as Algolia or Gorgias.

Learn more about Hydrogen here and its list of integrations here.

Inspire

In this section, I’m writing about a book regarding an airplane crash. I understand that this topic could be distressing. If you are uncomfortable with or affected by discussions of aviation accidents, I recommend skipping this section. Your well-being is my priority.

I just finished reading a book that really shaked me. It’s not a happy one but it’s an important one. It’s “MH370 Flight, a hijacked life” (“Vol MH370, une vie détournée”) by Ghyslain Wattrelos.

Ghyslain is a French husband and father who lost his wife Laurence and two of their three children (Ambre and Hadrien) in 2014, in a Malaysia Airlines plane crash. 239 people were on board.

I saw Ghyslain speak many times on French TV and I know that Netflix made a series about his story. But I preferred reading the book, to have all the details in writing and really dive deep into his investigation which went on for years.

Why an investigation?

Because the MH370 flight is one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. The plane made unexplained path deviations, then vanished without a trace.

The investigation around it sounds very much like a movie. After years of false hopes and dead ends, Ghyslain’s main theory is that the plane was shot down because it was approaching too close to a US military base. This possibility involves a lot of politics. Many times, it reminded me of the TV show “Scandal” but in a much more sad way as this one is a true story.

Whatever the truth may be (we will probably never know), one fact remains: Ghyslain Wattrelos is an incredibly strong man. He went through one of the most atrocious ordeals a human can experience and he is still standing.

His strength of character, his tenacity and his dedication are calling for nothing else than respect. His deep pain and the way he expresses it touched me.

It was a moving and instructive book to read. I recommend it.

Learn more about the MH370 flight by reading Ghyslain Wattrelos’s book (in French) or reading this article from the Washington Post.

Explore

I have always liked football.

When I was between 6 and 12 years old, I used to play football with my friends at school, as well as with my brother and cousins.

I never followed the clubs competitions on TV but I do watch international games closely, especially during the World Cup.

When I saw that Netflix released a documentary series about David Beckham, I thought it would be cool to watch it.

Because I was born in 1995 and never followed club competitions, I didn’t see David Beckham play much. And I didn’t know anything about his story.

Now I do.

I spent my Saturday afternoon watching this documentary series composed of 4 one-hour long episodes. It was amazing.

I discovered his debut at Manchester United in 1992 and his unbelievable goal from the halfway line when they were playing against Wimbledon in 1996.

Contrary to what we may think, this documentary series is not only about football. I would even say that football is the second topic.

This documentary is about the most important thing in David Beckham’s life: his family. This starts when he meets his future wife Victoria Adams, the famous Posh Spice from the Spice Girls, in 1997.

All along the documentary, we discover the other side of a footballer’s life, which is everything he has in mind during each game. For Beckham, being away from the love of his life was difficult. And many topics accumulated on top of it: paparazzis watching his every move, being abused by his fans for months because he received a red card during a crucial game, receiving death threats as well as kidnap threats for his kids…

This documentary was very well directed and edited. We are presented with what seems to be a complete picture of David Beckham’s character. He appears to be sensible, passionate and dedicated to his family and his work.

It leaves me with a strong empathy and admiration for him.

If you are interested in learning more about him, grab something to eat, make yourself comfortable and press play.

Enjoy.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie