What Is Headless WordPress And It’s Benefits

WordPress is an open-source and free content management system. Which is one of the most popular and widespread CMS platforms, according to W3Techs, powering 43.3% of the websites globally. What began in the year 2003 has involved a tech juggernaut that focuses on helping individuals and corporations as the fork of early 2000s blogging platform cafelog/b2 worldwide to establish their digital presence on a larger scale. 

However, WordPress is constructed as a platform that is monolithic. Which a tightly coupled backend and frontend, creating it unwieldy for developers who desire to construct digital experiences of its theme-based structure. Without the constraints. If an individual felt stuck or shut while using WordPress, focusing on decoupling the backend from the frontend might be the solution. Going headless will help the individual in unlocking the variety of modern opportunities offered for WordPress developers by extending the entrance for unique tech stacks, frameworks, and delivery channels. 

However, it is not a judgment, and we don’t support making decisions blindly. Here we shed light on the advantages and drawbacks of headless WordPress.

What Is A Headless CMS?

A headless CMS is one of the content management systems which is not designed to couple to any of the frontend, and its content is easily accessible via an API, attaching the backend to a frontend or ‘head.’ A headless CMS terminates the constraints on how content is delivered and presented, focuses on enabling professional developers to operate one content source and deliver it to smartwatches, mobile applications, and IoT devices as well as apps and websites.

Contrary to ‘traditional or standard’ platforms like Drupal or WordPress that are constructed on a LAMP stack, which is a headless CMS that stores and creates XML or JSON files, which can be presented and red by frontend frameworks like Next.js or Gatsby. This freedom of frameworks delivers developers with the innovative space to produce, test, deploy, and maintain digital experiences. 

While numerous people will suggest an individual ditch WordPress altogether if they are willing to go headless, decoupling the platform is considered a convenient way without re-platforming to achieve the advantages of the headless architecture for most WordPress users. But you must be wondering what exactly headless WordPress is and why an individual would want to use it?

What Is Headless WordPress?

A website that has headless WordPress operates everything as the CMS. But other frontend tools are used to render and display content to the user. This API-first system permits developers to incorporate third-party services, concentrates on decoupling all the content from WordPress. And delivers high-quality content to different interfaces and channels.

In addition, individuals don’t need to present content utilizing themes with headless WordPress. Themes of WordPress limit how developers offer content, pushing them to think and work within the website boundaries and controlling them from constructing digital experiences at scale. Instead, when they think of leveraging WordPress as an advanced headless platform. Where they only use it to keep the server and data as an API endpoint. The approach of decoupling focuses on separating concerns and allows marketing teams to perform with the standard WordPress UI. While allowing developers to produce a website that employs the workflow and the tech stack they are satisfied with, like GraphQL, React, and Git. 

As headless and Jamstack technologies evolve mainstream, bringing the immense popularity. And benefit of WordPress’s backend is an affordable method of testing with unexplored or modern development paradigms. Gatsby, for example, built gatsby-source-WordPress plugin that authorizes individuals to source content. It source the content from WordPress using GraphQL as REST APIs cached to be operated in a site of Gatsby. 

The plugin has been installed more than 1 million times. And its user base keeps on increasing, which suggests that headless WordPress has evolved much better than an alternative niche. Making sense in imagining WordPress as a headless CMS.  As developers get a WordPress installation with almost all its advanced features intact and the capacity to test with frameworks of the web that couldn’t use before. While failing the head might not be the ideal bet for all users of WordPress. Offering an abundance of benefits for forward-thinking companies and developers. 

Benefits of Headless WordPress

While standard WordPress is a widespread option for users that are non-technical, it falls short for most of the developers who desire more space and a more unified developer experience over the UI and the features. The Decouplation of WordPress from the frontend is an alternative worth regarding for those professional developers. Let’s examine some of its main advantages.

Supports A Wider Collection Of Tools, Libraries, And Frameworks

The monolithic architecture of Vanilla WordPress forces and strengthen to marry a technological stack selected early in the development process. Building classic WordPress sites by using PHP templates is a massive hurdle for developers as it counts as an additional layer of complicatedness, especially if you are operated to constructing websites using hosting and components the sites on following CI/CD or Netlify and Vercel practices.

On the contrary, Headless WordPress encourages building websites using the favorite JavaScript frontend tool and framework stack. In addition, it proposes an approach technology-agnostic, which makes it easier to incorporate technologies and tools into the workflow of the project without sacrificing what they have already built.

Unlocks Performance Benefits

WordPress is created close to PHP. Per page is developed from information or data stored in a database, and they take more time to pack than a stagnant site built employing files of HTML. Individual gets an even slower site when they add plugins to their equation. Developers don’t require to make up or hide performance issues by using headless WordPress.

Instead, It can join the backend to a Next.js or Gatsby frontend. And instantly access benefits of performance such as faster loading times, server-side rendering. And out-of-the-box SEO possibilities. Besides, when developers choose the alternatives of headless. Building digital experiences utilizing best practices of the modern web, future-proofing the build.

Allows For Code Reusability

In WordPress, neither the data nor the code is portable; having the possibility to keep content and reuse it utilizing the file of functions.php, is not the ideal way of accomplishing it, which ends up functioning more than they would with a headless solution. Users can leverage APIs to convey with the backend by going headless. Once the content has been published after being authored in WordPress, it becomes unrestricted to be supplied to numerous frontends. Plus, by qualifying to operate modular frameworks by reusing code from further projects without impacting changes on the backend.

Securing Data And Information From Malicious Actors

Traditional WordPress is vulnerable to malicious attacks or cyber-attacks. As Hackers or Cyberpunks are only required to acquire access to the file of the /wp-login.php of a website to start an attack of brute force. Compromising with the plugin to attain access, or overload the website with submissions to initiate a DDoS attack. The headless architecture precludes, which is the type of cyberattack. By lowering the dependence on plugins, permitting client-side rendering, and utilizing a CDN to the content of the cache. Hackers will discover fewer surfaces for the attack, preventing them from messing with the headless site. Also, the nature of API-first of headless WordPress makes it more manageable to combine with cybersecurity tools and services to deter further intrusions.

WordPress decoupling arrives with numerous advantages. The headless approach brings architectural freedom and solid performance gains but presents complexness that can be too difficult for non-technical people or beginner developers. We believe headless WordPress is the future, but it spells doom for its traditional or classic counterpart. WordPress has a massive market of individuals who are not professional developers and are not interested in CMS decoupling, which will not change.

The technology of headless is and will resume being a feasible choice for businesses and companies. With the muscle of a developer, the experience background. And the funds at scale for building custom experiences in the digital world. Now that WordPress is acquiring traction as a doable headless CMS. It’s pleasant to see developers examining to acclimate the platform to serve unexplored use cases. Headless WordPress is distinguishable from traditional CMSes and decoupled. As they don’t have any connection with content rendering and are API-exclusive. Thus, selecting such a WordPress can assist individuals in being a component of the futuristic technology.