Ever since I came to know about the possibility of a headless setup for WordPress, I have always been tempted to try it out.
I tested out a simple setup based on Next.JS on my local setup, before going ahead with Frontity on my blog with high traffic, which now has 2 posts counting this one ?
You can check out the simple implementation here https://github.com/thrijith/headless-wp which is based on this https://webdevstudios.com/2019/01/03/headless-wordpress-with-react-and-nextjs-1/
The setup is pretty straightforward you may follow this, to get started.
Run npx frontity create mysite-frontity-app && cd mysite-frontity-app
, select your desired theme and it will create a starter setup for your Forntiy app, run npx frontity dev
, to launch the app, it will use a demo site to get the posts data for your newly created site.
![](https://thrijith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/image-1-1024x333.png)
Go ahead and edit frontity.settings.js and point @frontity/wp-source => api field to your WordPress site, run npx frontity dev
again you should now see posts from your site instead of data from the demo site.
![](https://thrijith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/image-2-1024x572.png)
Deploying your site in Vercel
Frontity has a dedicated section which covers the deployment on Vercel ( Previously Zeit )
Once your app is set up correctly, it will be visible in your Vercel Dashboard, it will create a random URL for your site, you can test your site there.
You can also set a custom domain for your site, settings for the same can be found under Project => Settings => Domains, you’ll also have to set up an ALIAS record to point your custom domain.
![](https://thrijith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Domains-thrijith-frontity-app-Vercel-2020-04-28-12-58-02.png)
![](https://thrijith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-28-at-1.01.50-PM.png)
Please note it may take a couple of hours to reflect the change.
PS: I might be trying Gatsby next and see how that goes, it is possible by the time you come across this post, all this setup might be long gone ? hope this helps you in some way.
Edit: Frontity site is now at https://frontity.thrijith.com/