Headless WordPress: Your Website’s Kryptonite or Crown Jewel?
By Mitali Purkait Ghosh on May 8, 2024
You know everything that needs to be known about a traditional WordPress website. It has been serving you all these years with a few hicks here and there. However, what’s this new talk about headless WordPress? Is it a new WordPress update? Do you need to switch?
Unlike traditional WordPress, headless WordPress gets rid of several limitations. You’ll be able to open up new avenues of customization, and scale seamlessly without interfering with the user experience. If traditional WordPress serves you well, there’s no need to change a thing.
However, if you want a truly unique website, headless WordPress may seem indispensable. At Digital Concepts, we help businesses as an offshore web development company to build a functional website from scratch and make smooth headless transitions.
What is Headless WordPress?
Headless WordPress is a decoupled CMS (Content Management System) that separates the back-end and front-end components. The front-end components are split into a stack and can be developed and customized independently.
Unlike traditional WordPress configuration that uses plugins and themes to show content to your users, headless WordPress does the same with the help of an API. The WordPress Rest APIallows developers to fetch crucial data from the backend in the JSON format. This data is then used for front-end apps or technologies powered by Angular or React JavaScript to create a custom site.
Reasons to switch to Headless WordPress
1. Its faster
Since the front-end stack is decoupled and independent from the back-end architecture, actual front-end content can be loaded only when necessary. That’s one of the solutions to fix page speed. On every page request, traditional WordPress dynamically generates all the content, by:
- Pulling data from the database
- Formatting it with the plugins and themes
- Building the HTML page that can be interpreted by the browser
This can be slow and grueling and can dramatically reduce a website’s loading speed. Headless WordPress leverages static content generation. As a business owner, you get to generate and edit content in the usual WordPress interface. However, that data gets exported and programmed to create pre-built HTML pages that can be delivered to the users instantly.
As user attention span gets shorter over time, it’s important to improve website performance and maintain it as you add more complicated features to your website. Headless WordPress is great for delivering more efficient code and limiting site loading speed to less than 2 seconds.
2. Multi-channel publishing
Your site data is highly portable when you switch to headless WordPress. You have the liberty to use that data for publishing your content on multiple channels or platforms and make the most out of your content.
For instance, a blog post written on your site can be turned into social media snippets with captivating images and automatically posted to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other relevant platforms. Great for increasing website visibility and maximizing reach. Moreover, you can convert the content in your recipe website or tutorial blog and make it more compatible with formats used by smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home. Similarly, integration with other platforms like AI (Artificial Intelligence) assistants and IoT (Internet of Things) devices can be achieved more easily with headless WordPress.
3. Security and scalability
Since the back-end components are separated from the front-end stack, you have more bulletproof security for your site. On the other hand, when your website gets more popular, you can scale the back-end CMS more seamlessly by allocating more resources to the server in the form of additional RAM and CPU power. While headless WordPress is more convenient and has obvious benefits, it demands higher upfront costs and developers to maintain and keep the site running smoothly. That’s where a custom wordpress development company can help. Our development team can provide robust and cost-effective solutions for your custom site and make it indistinguishable from the competition with an appealing design and amazing features. Ring us at +91 98301 40672 to know more about our services.
Mitali Purkait Ghosh, the Co-Founder of Digital Concepts, brings a wealth of knowledge and innovation to the marketing sphere. Mitali and her dedicated team offer unparalleled expertise in digital marketing and content writing, among other key online strategies.