Future Ready Websites with Headless WordPress

It’s no surprise that WordPress is the most popular content management system worldwide. A powerful platform that allows you to create, manage and publish content without any coding.

WordPress is easy to set up, highly flexible, and incredibly intuitive. Owing to its numerous functionalities and capabilities, WordPress is rightly the leading choice of businesses of every size.

But what’s even more interesting is the evolution of WordPress with the emerging technologies. We are talking about Headless WordPress and its end-to-end solution – WP Engine’s Atlas.

So, what are they and how can they help improve your business? Let’s find out.

What is Headless WordPress?

A headless WordPress is simply a WordPress without a frontend. In other words, it uses WordPress as its content management system but with a custom frontend stack like React, Angular, Vue, Next.js, Frontity, and Gatsby. The interaction between these two cross-technology interfaces happens through REST/GraphQL APIs.

With headless WordPress, developers have the freedom to use any frontend technology stack to deliver content for dynamic end-user experiences. At the same time, content creators can continue to create within the familiar WordPress interface without any modifications in the process.

Headless WordPress has a variety of benefits such as –

Faster Performance
By removing the front-end, headless WordPress becomes a lightweight CMS that loads only the necessary files through API calls. This means your website and content delivery will be faster, smoother, and more responsive.

Higher Flexibility
The headless WordPress content can be easily combined with content from other CMSs and web services. The overall application architecture is also easier to maintain and manage for developers.

Tighter Security
The separation of the frontend from the backend minimizes security risks to your content. With no reachable database, there’s already a smaller area for attack, thus preventing accidental exposure and DDoS attacks.

Multi-Channel Content Publishing
Owing to the REST APIs, your content can be published anywhere be it a static website, mobile app, social media, or a smart device – all at the same time. You also don’t have to worry about formatting if your development team works on a mix of various technologies.

Future Proof Tech Stack
Being API-driven, headless WordPress can be integrated with many platforms. It can also support future technologies like AR, VR, and IoT, hence, future-proofing your tech stack and giving you a competitive digital business edge.

WP Engine Atlas – An End-to-End Solution for Headless WordPress Websites

WP Engine’s Atlas is a one of its kind solution for powering websites built with headless WordPress. It includes the dynamic Node.js layer, static CDN layer, and the Headless CMS to offer dynamic omnichannel experiences at speed that is usually reserved for static websites. As per a report by Velocitize, the page load speed with Atlas can be 10 times faster than WordPress alone.

Hence, this approach is quite suitable for developers looking for better site performance, seamless customization, and enhanced security and scalability.

An Account of Headless WordPress and Atlas Integration by Grazitti

Integrating Atlas with Headless WordPress is a powerful solution that not only equips businesses with top-notch technology but also delivers performance excellence.

Below is an account of one of our Real Estate clients on how they were able to incorporate Headless WordPress and Atlas integration on their website for high speed and performance.

The Context:

The client’s website was built on two stacks – React JS as the front-end framework and WordPress CMS as the backend for managing data. The use of React JS app as the theme of WordPress was leading to various issues such as:

• Non-functioning of Legacy Preview option
• Poor SEO performance
• Slow page speed due to the absence of Server Side Rendering

The client wanted us to implement a solution that would resolve these issues and improve their site speed and SEO performance.

The Solution:

• We implemented the Atlas Headless solution by WP Engine.
• This framework builds the application in two parts: First is the Atlas Node Engine which is built on Next Framework and the second is the WordPress instance itself.
• The node app connects with WordPress by using GraphQL that effectively loads the data in much less time as compared to standard WordPress Rest API.
• It provides only the exact data requested instead of a huge load of unnecessary data, hence, improving the site speed performance.

The Impact:

• The framework enabled the admin to preview the post by simply using the regular “preview” option from the WP Admin.
• As the WordPress instance is independent, only the APIs are now public. This reduced the security threats since the frontend is hosted on a different platform.
• The SEO entities such as LCP and FCP that were in the red flag earlier are in green numbers now.
• The speed stats reached up to 99.
• By only pointing the Atlas platform to the git repository of the node app, the WP Engine will watch the repo and deploy it automatically.

Advantages of Atlas Node Engine

Atlas introduces Node Engine with accelerated technology to manage Node.js hosting. The Node.js platform offers various features and benefits to developers to build dynamic experiences. Some of these include –

Modern Tech and Framework
Decoupled CMS lets developers use modern frameworks including React, Angular, Vue, Next.js, Frontity, and Gatsby. It also helps improve performance since back-end content authoring can be done on a separate system while the front-end is served through Atlas.

User Portal
Atlas portal enables easy platform deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting to streamline workflows. The automated Github Deploys & Branches let developers control when and where code is deployed.

Secure and Innovative Environment
Atlas Node.js automatically pushes GitHub projects + branches to live environments via a secure connection. Furthermore, it decreases time-to-innovation and supports CI/CD initiatives.

Final Notes

The need to deliver high-performing, scalable, and secure omnichannel digital experiences is at an all-time high. Headless WordPress has proven to build faster, flexible, and dynamic websites for businesses that are truly future-ready!

Want to Make Your WordPress Website Future-Ready? Contact Us.