Building a Fast Website with a Headless WordPress Backend and Next.js Frontend

In today’s web development landscape, combining a headless CMS with a modern frontend framework is a powerful approach to building fast, dynamic websites. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to use WordPress as a headless CMS backend and Next.js as the frontend to create a blazing-fast website. We’ll cover the installation, API integration, and customization of your site using a starter template that simplifies the process.

Step 1: Setting Up WordPress

First, you’ll need to install WordPress on your hosting platform. This could be cPanel or any other hosting service you prefer. Once installed, WordPress will serve as the content management system (CMS) for your site.

Accessing the WordPress API

WordPress offers a robust REST API that allows you to interact with your site’s data programmatically. You can access the API at:

https://yourwordpress.com/wp-json

This endpoint provides all the available WordPress APIs. If you’re unfamiliar with these APIs, or if you’d like to explore them in a more structured way, you can use a Postman collection. This collection contains all the WordPress API endpoints, making it easier to test and integrate them into your frontend.

Check out the Postman collection here: WordPress API Postman Collection

Step 2: Setting Up the Frontend with Next.js

Now that your WordPress backend is ready, it’s time to set up the frontend. While you could start from scratch and manually integrate the APIs, I’ll introduce you to a starter template that simplifies this process. This template, built on Next.js, already has all the default WordPress APIs implemented, so you can focus on customizing the design and adding new features.

Using the Next.js Starter Template

To get started with the template, follow these steps:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/9d8dev/next-wp

Install the dependencies:

npm install

Configure the environment variables:

In the root directory of your project, create a .env file and copy the contents of .env.example into it. Then, replace the following variables with your actual WordPress site URLs:

WORDPRESS_URL="https://yourwordpress.com" 
WORDPRESS_HOSTNAME="yourwordpress.com"

Run the development server:

npm run dev

And just like that, you’ve got yourself a brand new Next.js site using WordPress as the backend!

Step 3: Customizing Your Site

With the basic setup in place, you can now start customizing your website. The starter template is fully flexible, allowing you to tweak the design, create new pages, and modify routings as needed. Additionally, as you install more WordPress plugins, you can utilize their APIs within your Next.js frontend, expanding your site’s functionality even further.

This approach not only speeds up your development process but also ensures that your website is fast and scalable. By leveraging WordPress for content management and Next.js for rendering, you’re setting yourself up for success with a modern, performant web stack.

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Useful Links

Wordpress Postman API Collection: https://www.postman.com/api-evangelist/wordpress/overview

Next.js Wordpress Starter Template: https://github.com/9d8dev/next-wp

And don't forget to leave star on the starter template. Without doubt its great work done by 9d8dev.

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