Software Engineering WordPress with Decoupled Front End Using React and Rest API Reference Architecture

WordPress is an extremely powerful platform for many use cases, but it’s not right for everything. Context is everything. Here we are going to look at a use case whereby you already have a WordPress Website that powers the primary website your customers interact with. This could be something ranging from a fairly static website through to a fully blown ecommerce website with 50,000 products. 

If we break down what WordPress actually is, it helps to understand the context and how the different components talk to each other; 

1. WordPress Admin – This is the space where your website administrators login to so they can manage the content throughout the system
2. WordPress Database – This is where the important data lives
3. WordPress Plugins – This is where you can extend the functionality of your website through an enormous marketplace of features and functionality
4. WordPress Theme – This is the look/feel of your website, which ultimately ends up presenting things on…..
5. WordPress Front End – i.e. This is what users interact with, which is essentially a friendly user interface that is abstracting the complexity under the hood
6. WordPress API – This is a computer to computer way of talking to each other, or technology to technology

So the default with WordPress is essentially using all the core components including the Admin, Database, Plugins and Themes. 

But what happens if you want to use a different technology stack on your Front End instead of the default WordPress Themes? 

Then that’s where the WordPress API comes into play. 

You can utilise any kind of Front End technology you prefer, such as React as an example, to give you a lot more options as the challenge scales. The possibilities are endless at this point. 

WordPress + WordPress API + React Front End Reference Architecture