Headless WordPress Site to JAMstack on Netlify

Most users of a site could care less about the tech stack behind it so you’re likely not concerned about the fact you’re currently viewing a headless WordPress experience built on a JAMstack where WordPress’s API is the source of content to create pre-rendered files served directly from a content delivery network (CDN) via Netlify, GatsbyJS, React and Algolia for search functionality.

Wow, that’s a lot of tech for a simple marketing site, huh?

At Integrity, we are obsessive advocates for user experience and appreciate the fact every user cares about site speed, usability, experiences being accessible across all devices and, to a growing extent, security. We also love to ensure our developers get to work in modern, clean tech frameworks enabling them to enjoy their work while creating world class user experiences.

For these reasons, the site you’re viewing has decoupled the front-end experience from the leading open source CMS in the world, WordPress. By decoupling, we can maintain the content administration benefits of WordPress but break free from the integrated theming dependent upon the CMS itself. No longer will pages have to ping a database for the content each time a user clicks a page, as we’ve built the site using the JAMstack.

Key benefits of this technical approach:

• Speed - Blazing fast pageviews. Just click from page to page within this site and you’ll get to experience it.
• Security - wp-login.php is such a known security issue, moving to prebuilt content that can’t be accessed in the same way, eliminates the security hole altogether.
• Reliability - Never get database connection errors and since you’re serving via a CDN, you can also distribute the content across the globe — closer to potential visitors.
• Downtime - Since you’re serving pre-built content directly from a content delivery network, the site is already “there” and ready for the user.
• Developer Experience - Nobody likes to have to do things simply because an existing framework dictates as such, so moving to a headless CMS approach with a cool, modern tech stack is enjoyable, if not exciting, for developers to work within.
• Unification - The decoupling of the front-end from the legacy back-end presents really cool opportunities to unify multiple CMS or e-commerce or CRM systems into a killer modern user experience - without having to rip out all the legacy plumbing that’s been invested in to date.
• Future-proofing - Building front-ends via an API into the CMS means we can more quickly optimize the user experience as new form factors, screen sizes and devices come online.

If you want to check for yourself, just run a Lighthouse audit from within Google Chrome's dev tools and you should see results along these lines:

Integrity embraces a strategic advantage today as the ability to manage and take advantage of the velocity of change occurring within the world. This change will only continue to increase so it becomes even more critical to have a team, a process and a modern technical approach (such as the site you’re currently viewing) to fully capitalize on the pace of innovation.

Contact us today to discuss if this approach is right for you.