WordPress as the most popular CMS can be the undisputed choice for millions of websites, but it doesn’t fit everyone’s requirements all the time. Sometimes websites may look for a little more flexibility, even one can be tempted to change the way they use WordPress. This new customization of a CMS is widely regarded as the headless CMS. Here through the length of this blog post we are going to explain what is headless CMS and how can we use it.
Defining a Headless CMS
In a nutshell, headless CMS is basically the CMS solution without any frontend. A headless CMS devoid of all the frontend components just comes with the API and the backend. A backend CMS is a kind of stripped-down CMS that provides everything you need to store data, manage the content and deal with the website workflow. Since there is no frontend visual display element, the question of themes and templates us irrelevant in the context of headless CMS.
Let’s have a look at the key attributes of a headless CMS.
- In sharp contrast to the traditional CMS, a headless CMS doesn’t provide any frontend and so it cannot be used for content publication.
- A headless CMS can only be used for backend data storage and content management.
- All the content publication features of popular CMS solutions are irrelevant with this approach.
- A headless CMS can also pose several security threats because of the absence of regular security measures. In the context of WordPress security and other CMS, this needs to be focused upon.
Benefits of Headless CMS
In spite of the immediate feeling of not having everything of a CMS solution in place, a headless CMS has its own set of advantages. A headless CMS architecture has basically been reached by the developers with these advantages in mind. The biggest draw for headless CMS is obviously the unmatched flexibility and control of the development process. The developers thanks to the headless CMS solutions can take control of every aspect of web development and the way data is stored and managed throughout the process.
Apart from this huge flexibility, it is also a tremendously beneficial thing that every headless CMS comes with its own API capable to remain in communication with the backend. This helps developers to save a great quantity of development time. Thanks to headless CMS lot of regular development tasks become exceptionally easier. From retrieving existing modules, creating updates and fixing bugs to performing several crucial backend tasks become extremely easier.
Moreover, headless CMS architecture allows more scalability while being segregated from the frontend it doesn’t cause any downtime for the end users. On top of all, a headless CMS stands compatible with most available and popular platforms. There is also one security advantage associated with the headless CMS. For example, just because the content publishing features are not native to the headless CMS solution, the so-called threats of the DDoS attacks can be minimized to a great extent.
How to Set Up A Headless WordPress CMS?
Now that the key attributes and the basic advantages of the headless CMS solution are apparent to us, we can think of implementing this approach with any popular CMS solution in the market. For the present post we have chosen to see it in the context of WordPress development. Let’s see how we can do it in few steps.
- Install and set up WordPress CMS freshly.
- Now, use a completely black theme that can only redirect to the static site.
- Now retrieve all the data from the endpoints of the WP REST API.
- If you want to incorporate several custom features all you need to do is to add Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
Let’s explain a few other steps in more details.
Using a Blank Theme with a Redirect
A theme is the component of any CMS solution including the WordPress which is used for displaying or creating the look and feel of the website. But considering the code that is used in the backend the theme in WordPress is made up of two different files, respectively the index.php file and the stylesheet.
The headless CMS API is made available through a separate URL different from the principal and static website. To ensure clarity one can also place it on a subdomain. In case one likes to go straight to the subdomain, the blank theme will help redirecting the users to the intended main page.
After putting both the index.php and the stylesheet within the wp-content/themes/blank directory, you can just go to the WordPress admin and activate the new theme. This will help redirecting anyone visiting the WordPress site to your original website. While you have every different WordPress backend feature intact, the separated website frontend allows boosting performance of your website. Such a solution keeps all the typical WordPress components including admin panel, API endpoints, or media files URLs intact and usable.
Retrieving Data
Your website Frontend needs to fetch data through the API. This is mainly done through AJAX requests. The most simple and effective way of making AJAX requests in JavaScript is through XMLHttpRequest. In case you feel this solution to be too complicated you can also opt for, the Fetch API which has become a new standard for sending asynchronous kind of data requests. Since there is still not the browser support for this, we can use a small piece of code to incorporate the fetch function in the browser.
Incorporating Custom Fields
When making posts in your WordPress site, you are likely to need a lot of on-page content elements including different forms and other custom fields. This requirement can be met easily with the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
The interface of this plugin within the admin panel looks really clean and straightforward. This plugin allows you to create all the required fields besides mentioning where they will be made available.
