I’ve been experimenting with a Headless WordPress + React Starter Kit from Postlight. It’s an automated toolset to create a powerful web publishing tool.

  • Headerless CMS - in this case WordPress used to edit and update the content on the website, but unlike a standard WordPress install this one won’t have a front end.
  • Seperate Frontend - in this case a React JavaScript front-end application which will display the content of the site.
  • Server-side rendering - grabing content via an API that can be loaded in the React front-end.

It uses three main technologies:

React

ReactJS is an open-source JavaScript library which is used for building user interfaces specifically for single page applications. It’s used for handling view layer for web and mobile apps. React allows developers to create large web applications which can change data, without reloading.

WordPress

WordPress is fast, flexible, responsive and open source. WordPress is a popular and easy-to-use CMS for beginners and more advanced users. The ability to extend and modify it to meet specific requirements make it a popular all-round content management system.

Docker

Docker gives programmers, development teams and operations engineers the common toolbox they need to take advantage of the distributed and networked nature of modern applications. Docker containers help package software for development, shipment and deployment.