People always mention “why should I use headless WordPress”, even Matt Mullenweg mentions that it’s not the future and that caching and better server-side work would be just as quick. Although this is true, we are fighting the whole Headless WordPress the wrong way, it isn’t and should not be a replacement to what we know today with WordPress, it’s just another side to it.
It’s a solution for certain situations, not all.
Since a well-known WordPress hosting platform recently released a product for headless WordPress hosting, our ears pricked. We’ve been about for nearly 2 years and the idea for hosting a simple WordPress endpoint has been about longer but because a behemoth of the industry releases something like this, people talk. Which is good, but it’s not always good to talk without context. Just because a product is released supporting headless WordPress, it doesn’t mean it’s the sole path future of WordPress, again, it’s another avenue.
The talking had been somewhat frustrating as the industry don’t get why they should use headless.
I hear a lot about headless #WordPress at the moment. The benefits it brings must outweigh the problems it creates. I think that for 95% of all projects, I think it adds a layer of project complexity that doesn’t make sense.
@wpmark
Here’s a recent tweet above.
Also, we listened to this podcast too — “Post Status Excerpt (No. 2) – Headless WordPress & Learning JavaScript“.
Both of these made us write this article and we hope the following is a worthy response.
From our point of view, it’s actually more about getting more people using WordPress, WordPress is renowned as a PHP built CMS that has had it’s fair share of exploits, every developer knows this, however, what if we don’t need to know PHP, what if security isn’t an issue anymore, this opens up a whole new world to WordPress. We can now open arms to new JavaScript developers, this is what we need to look at. This is what floodgate we need to open. It’s not about forcing PHP developers and theme shops to suddenly adopt JavaScript and headless setups. Yes, they can add a layer of complexity, but it’s for good reason and JavaScript developers are used to this architecture.
We want to see healthy competition with JavaScript-specific CMS’s, not to change the mindsets of already trained WordPress developers. If they see the benefit for certain projects, great, but it’s not a solution for all.
What we need to remember is the end-user of WordPress is the client, WordPress is THE best CMS from a client point of view, so let’s allow all developers to leverage this with different ways of using WordPress. If the client wants to use Shopify AND WordPress, great, why should we tell the client that, sorry, it’s either WooCommerce or nothing.
The beauty of headless WordPress is we can now pull it into anything we want without having to know PHP or know the WordPress theme hierarchy. That’s not to say it’s gone, but it’s opening up to a new world.