Headless WordPress for High-Demand, High Availability Sites

A Word From MIDTC CTO Nick DeLorenzo on Headless WordPress Sites:

One of the biggest challenges facing high-traffic WordPress sites is that if the plugin stack and caching configuration are not well-optimized, they tend to experience continuous performance issues. Additionally, it’s extremely common for conventional WordPress sites to experience high load times on the admin when there are many concurrent users in the system generating content. This is something that is inevitably encountered by media sites where conventional WordPress is the primary system of record for content management.

In these situations, I typically recommend that a client utilize what is known as a “Headless” WordPress configuration. In a headless configuration, the WordPress backend is separated from the front-end that renders the site – what this means is that all of the database and CPU resources for the backend are distinct from – and unimpacted by – frontend utilization or traffic – and vice versa.

This has a number of advantages, the most immediate of which is performance. It essentially provides maximum potential performance for the site admin, and the frontend does not have to actively query database resources which may be consumed by backend processes to render content. As a result, every aspect of site performance can be improved.

Another advantage is scalability: you can scale database resources for the backend without needing to scale the webhead or alter configurations on the frontend, or scale frontend resources for greater bandwidth while conserving database resources. For large organizations, this can result in substantial savings.

Headless also secures the backend and database from direct attack vectors commonly found in a WordPress instance, by obfuscating vulnerabilities, and making it possible to lock down APIs.

Finally, it makes it possible to alter feature sets on the admin without impacting the frontend, or implement redesigns that leverage the same backend functionalities. All of these are ideal for large scale organizations.

There are several disadvantages, however:

It’s extremely important that any design and functional requirements for headless sites be spelled out well ahead of time. Any feature of a headless implementation needs to be meticulously pre-planned to ensure that what you input on the admin is reflected on the frontend. This means you can’t simply slap a plugin in on your headless implementation and suddenly add a new functionality. As a result, new feature sets commonly require development resources.

Additionally, maintenance of headless sites can be complicated for teams that do not have core competencies in either WordPress or the various JavaScript frameworks (for example React, Vue or Angular) commonly used on WordPress sites. If the development teams do not understand the principles or potential issues with headless hosting, it can be challenging to isolate and quickly react to issues.

Finally, it’s important that the development teams, users, and executives responsible for running these sites not be siloed, and have a very clear understanding of – again, the requirements, capabilities, advantages, and limitations of headless sites.

Headless sites are ideal for large-scale media organizations and address many of the challenges they encounter with web hosting. But it’s important that the organizations in question be prepared to operate these sites, particularly if they have a direct hand in the maintenance of these sites. MIDTC has expertise handling headless WordPress implementations, and we commonly recommend them for organizations that have these unique challenges as they can save a substantial amount of money and offer superior performance.