What Is Headless WordPress and How to Create a Headless Site With Vue.js

WordPress has been the go-to Content Management System (CMS) for developers and non-developers to quickly build and create stunning websites.

Using a microservice architecture, where the content management backend is separate from the frontend, allows maximum control of both the “ends.”  This separation addresses a key issue, one that headless content management systems, such as headless WordPress, aim to solve.

With a headless approach, businesses have more granular control over the content management backend. They’re also free to use any frontend library or framework of their choice, including React, Vue, Angular, etc.

This guide explores in detail headless WordPress, what it is all about, when and why you should consider using it. You also learn how to create a headless WordPress environment, building out the frontend with Vue.js, deploying the headless WordPress using Kinsta’s WordPress Hosting and the frontend with our free Static Site Hosting.

What Is Headless WordPress?

WordPress is a monolith application where the backend and the frontend parts are tightly wound together. The backend is where the management comes in, where you can create, edit, add, and delete content, including changing appearance configurations. In contrast, the frontend is responsible for displaying the content to the user.

Headless WordPress is the term used to describe decoupled WordPress. The backend (management) part is separate from the frontend part of the WordPress CMS. You can develop and manage the frontend as a standalone application with any frontend framework of your choice.

To understand why this matters in practice, it helps to see how the two setups differ under the hood.

With a traditional WordPress site, a single system handles everything: a user requests a page, WordPress queries the database, applies your active theme’s templates, and outputs fully-rendered HTML to the browser. Everything is handled in one place.

With a headless setup, that process splits in two. The user’s request goes to your frontend application, which then calls WordPress’s API endpoint. WordPress queries the database and returns the content as JSON. The frontend application takes that JSON and assembles it into the HTML that the visitor sees. WordPress no longer controls what visitors see: it’s purely responsible for storing and delivering content.

Pros and Cons of Headless WordPress

Headless WordPress offers a host of advantages and drawbacks, each impacting your project in distinct ways. Let’s explore the pros and cons to give you a better understanding of the concept.

The Pros

1. Super-Fast Performance

   In this era of super-fast performing applications, your website should not take more than a few seconds to load and avoid losing visitors. Since the frontend is separated from WordPress and can be developed with high-performance and scalability in mind using modern frontend tools, employing a headless WordPress approach is of great benefit to the overall user experience of your website.

2. Granular Control

   Opting for headless architecture gives you more control over your design layout, content presentation, and how users interact with the frontend of your application. It also allows your backend content to be secured and accessed from a central location.

3. Increased Scalability

   Scaling WordPress can be complicated sometimes because you don’t have complete control of all the components and codes that powers WordPress, mainly if you aren’t a developer. But with the decoupling of WordPress, it is effortless to scale each part in isolation, and you can easily detect which part needs scaling.

4. Tighter Security

   We can not stress the security benefits of headless WordPress enough since decoupled WordPress has high-security benefits against hackers and DDoS attacks. The headless WordPress approach makes it difficult for hackers to access your sensitive backend data since it is separate from your frontend, the user-facing website.

5. Lightweight Design

   You will have more control over the structure and layout of your frontend design. In addition, you can work on the frontend with more freedom and customized design; thanks to the REST API calls, you’ll be able to take advantage of modern web tools and deploy them on the frontend.

6. Multi-Channel Content Publishing

   Since headless WordPress uses an API-based system to communicate your content to the frontend, you can display your content anywhere and on any platform, including desktop, website, mobile apps, and touch screen kiosk. It is also possible to make full use of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Internet of Things devices to display and present your content coming from the API-based system.

The Cons

We’ll explore the cons of headless in more depth as we go, but its main drawbacks are:

1. Separating the backend and the frontend gives you an extra load when managing different website instances.
2. It can be costly to implement since it needs additional members on your team and extra capital for running different instances.
3. Making your content available on different platforms can cause an inconsistent experience for your users if the content is not presented consistently across all platforms.

When Headless WordPress Might Not Be the Best Option

Since headless WordPress is an incredible innovation with great benefits, there are some things you use to keep in mind when deciding whether or not you should go with it.

1. Headless WordPress can be expensive to maintain. You will maintain two different instances of one website from infrastructure to multiple developers. However, leveraging our free Static Site Hosting service, if you opt for a Node.js based SSG like Gatsby, Next.js, Nuxt, etc., your focus narrows down to hosting WordPress alone.
2. Headless WordPress does not support all features of WordPress. For instance, great WordPress features like the WYSIWYG editor and live preview won’t work when using a separated frontend.
3. It is more expensive to set up a headless WordPress. Hence, always keep its increased cost in mind.

Is Headless WordPress Right for You?

Consider these scenarios where using headless WordPress might be the ideal choice:

1. If safeguarding your website’s security is your foremost priority and critical for your business.
2. If your website doesn’t necessitate frequent updates and upgrades, opting for a headless setup could be advantageous.
3. If you seek a tailored design beyond the capabilities of standard WordPress themes, aiming for a unique frontend design, headless WordPress becomes an enticing option.
4. For short-term websites or demo platforms designed for presentations and tutorials, exploring the headless approach might be worthwhile.

Who Should Avoid Using Headless WordPress

Here are some cases in which using headless WordPress is not a good option:

1. When your website relies solely on specific plugins and functionalities that control and work best with the frontend of your application, you should stick with WordPress unless the plugins offer API-based options to consume the data.
2. Suppose you’re not interested in coding your website, or your website requires daily maintenance, and you’re not hiring a professional for routine maintenance due to your low budget. In that case, WordPress is a suitable option for you.
3. If you’re not a seasoned developer and want to create and manage your website alone, you should be using WordPress.

REST API vs. WPGraphQL: Choosing How Your Frontend Talks to WordPress

Once you decide to go headless, you need to choose how your frontend will retrieve content from WordPress. There are two main options, and the choice affects both your development workflow and your site’s performance.

The WordPress REST API

WordPress ships with a REST API built into core, so you can start making requests without installing anything extra. Endpoints like /wp-json/wp/v2/posts return your content as JSON, and any frontend framework can consume it with a basic fetch request. Most WordPress plugins also expose their own REST API endpoints, which is particularly useful if you’re running WooCommerce or relying on plugin-generated data.

The limitation is that the REST API works through independent queries. Fetching a blog post with its featured image, author details, and categories typically requires several separate requests. On data-heavy pages, that overhead adds up.

WPGraphQL

WPGraphQL is a free, open-source plugin that adds a GraphQL endpoint to your WordPress site. Instead of chaining multiple requests, you write a single query that specifies exactly what you need (post title, excerpt, author name, featured image URL) and get it all back in one round trip:

query GetPost {
  post(id: "hello-world", idType: SLUG) {
    title
    excerpt
    author {
      node {
        name
        avatar {
          url
        }
      }
    }
    featuredImage {
      node {
        sourceUrl
        altText
      }
    }
  }
}

This makes WPGraphQL noticeably faster for complex data requirements and is the preferred choice for many teams building with Next.js, Astro, or Nuxt. The tradeoff is that not all WordPress plugins expose their data through GraphQL by default: WooCommerce and Advanced Custom Fields both require separate WPGraphQL extension plugins.

Which one should you use?

For simpler projects, or where plugin compatibility is a priority, the REST API is a reliable choice with zero setup.

For developer-heavy projects where you need precise control over what data gets fetched and when, WPGraphQL is worth the extra configuration.

In either case, the content you create in the WordPress dashboard works exactly the same. The difference is entirely in how the frontend retrieves it.

In the tutorial below, we’ll use the WordPress REST API because it’s built into WordPress and requires no additional setup.

Common Frontend Frameworks for Headless WordPress

Before you start building, you’ll also need to decide which frontend framework will power your headless setup. One of the main selling points of headless WordPress is that you can use any modern JavaScript framework for your frontend. Here’s a practical overview of the most common choices.

Next.js (React)

The most widely-used combination for headless WordPress. Next.js supports both static site generation and server-side rendering, works well with both the REST API and WPGraphQL, and has a large ecosystem of WordPress-specific resources. If you or your team already know React, Next.js is the natural default.

Gatsby

A React-based static site generator with a dedicated WordPress source plugin (gatsby-source-wordpress) that integrates with WPGraphQL to pull your content at build time and output static HTML. One of the earliest popular choices for headless WordPress and still widely used for content-heavy sites.

Astro

A newer framework that has gained significant traction for content-focused sites. Astro ships zero JavaScript by default, outputting only the HTML and CSS each page needs. It integrates cleanly with both REST and GraphQL sources and is one of the faster options available for headless content builds.

Nuxt (Vue)

The Vue.js equivalent of Next.js, offering the same SSG and SSR capabilities with a Vue-based developer experience. If your team is more comfortable with Vue, Nuxt is the production-ready framework equivalent of what the tutorial later in this guide demonstrates with Vue 3 directly.

For most new headless WordPress projects, Next.js and Astro are the most common starting points. We’ll soon use Vue 3 to illustrate how the REST API connection works, and the same fundamentals apply across all of the frameworks above.

SSG, SSR, or Hybrid: Choosing How Your Frontend Serves Pages

Another thing to decide before you start building: how your frontend will generate and serve pages. The right approach depends on how often your content changes and how much infrastructure you want to manage.

Static Site Generation (SSG)

At build time, your frontend fetches all content from WordPress and pre-renders every page as a static HTML file. When a visitor arrives, they’re served that pre-built file immediately: no server processing required. This is the fastest option for end users and means your WordPress installation is only needed when you trigger a new build, for example when you publish a new post.

The main limitation: every content change requires a full or partial rebuild. For sites with thousands of posts or very frequent updates, this can slow your publishing workflow.

Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Pages are generated on a Node.js server at request time. Each visit triggers a fresh fetch from WordPress and renders the HTML before it’s sent to the browser. This eliminates the rebuild requirement and keeps content always up to date, but it requires a running server rather than simple static file hosting.

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) and Hybrid Approaches

Frameworks like Next.js support a middle-ground approach where pages are statically generated but automatically revalidated after a set interval. This gives you most of the performance benefits of SSG while keeping content reasonably current without a full rebuild. It’s the most common approach for large, content-heavy headless WordPress sites.

For most content sites, SSG or a hybrid approach is the right default. SSR makes more sense when you need real-time data or personalized content that can’t be pre-rendered.

SEO Considerations for Headless WordPress

Going headless can improve your site’s performance, but it also means leaving behind some of WordPress’s built-in SEO infrastructure. Here’s what you’ll need to handle on the frontend.

Metadata and Open Graph tags

In a traditional WordPress setup, plugins like Yoast or Rank Math manage meta titles, descriptions, and Open Graph tags page by page. In a headless setup, you need to fetch that SEO metadata from WordPress via the API and inject it into your frontend pages. WPGraphQL handles this cleanly with the wp-graphql-yoast-seo extension, which exposes your Yoast data as GraphQL fields you can query alongside your content.

Sitemaps and RSS feeds

WordPress generates XML sitemaps and RSS feeds automatically. With a headless frontend, this functionality either needs to be rebuilt at the framework level or fetched from the WordPress API at build time and served from the frontend. Most modern frameworks have sitemap generation utilities that can work from API data.

Redirects

WordPress handles permalink redirects natively. When you go headless, that logic needs to move to your frontend framework or CDN configuration. This is easy to overlook during a migration and can result in 404s that affect your rankings if existing URLs aren’t properly redirected.

JavaScript rendering

Google crawls JavaScript-rendered pages, but not instantly. SSG and SSR produce pre-rendered HTML that search engines can read immediately, which is why properly built headless WordPress sites have no inherent SEO disadvantage over traditional WordPress. A client-side-only single-page application with no server rendering is the setup to avoid for SEO.

None of these are blockers, of course. They’re all solvable with intentional planning. But they do require developer involvement upfront, which reinforces why headless WordPress is better suited to teams with dedicated technical resources.

How To Make WordPress Headless (Build an App)

Now that we’ve covered the concepts, let’s walk through an actual implementation.

There are many ways to build a headless WordPress frontend, but the underlying pattern is the same regardless of which framework you choose: WordPress manages your content, the REST API or WPGraphQL delivers it as JSON, and your frontend framework renders it.

In this example, we’ll use Vue 3 as the frontend. The same approach applies directly to Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, or any other framework covered earlier in this guide.

Setting Up Headless WordPress With Kinsta

There are three methods to build a WordPress site using Kinsta. You can either create the site locally or utilize our user-friendly dashboard. Additionally, the Kinsta API is available for use.

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll be using DevKinsta. It’s a well-known WordPress local development environment developed by the Kinsta team, enabling you to design, develop, and deploy WordPress sites seamlessly from your local machine’s comfort.

DevKinsta is free forever and offers you great benefits and comfort in developing and building WordPress with it.

You can download and install DevKinsta from the official website and follow the instructions in the documentation to get started.

If you have DevKinsta installed already, open it and follow the steps below to set up your first headless WordPress:

1. On the DevKinsta dashboard, create a new WordPress site using Nginx, MySQL, and any PHP version. Also, you can import an existing WordPress instance or create a custom WordPress instance from the dashboard.
2. Next, give your newly created WordPress instance a name, admin username, and password, then click Create and copy out the details while DevKinsta creates a new WordPress instance in your local machine.
3. Next, click Open Site to open your newly created WordPress instance on your default browser.
4. Finally, log in to the admin dashboard by accessing the http://site_name.local/wp-admin link and typing in the admin login credentials you entered when creating the new instance.

Configuring Our Headless WordPress

After successfully logging into your WordPress dashboard, you can go ahead to install any plugins and configuration of your choice.

You can completely deactivate the theme because we solely require the content accessible through the WordPress REST API-based endpoint. To achieve this, install any website redirect plugin (e.g. Simple Website Redirect plugin) and configure it accordingly.

Next, navigate to the plugin’s Settings and input your frontend-based URL (e.g. http://news-blog.local), click on the Advanced setting options, and add the following paths — /wp-admin, /wp-login.php, and /wp-json — to the Exclude Paths section.

Lastly, enable the Plugin by selecting Enabled in the Redirect Status dropdown:

That’s it! You can complete this step at any time; it’s not mandatory to do it immediately, especially if you haven’t set up a frontend URL yet.

In addition, if your JSON API is not enabled when you visit http://site_name.local/wp-json by default, you can enable it by opening your Permalinks under WordPress Settings and selecting Post Name or any other one of your choice except Plain:

Now when you visit your http://site_name.local/wp-json, it should present you with JSON data like below:

{
  "name": "Headless WordPress News Blog",
  "description": "Just another WordPress site",
  "url": "http://headless-wordpress-news-blog.local",
  "home": "http://headless-wordpress-news-blog.local",
  "gmt_offset": "0",
  "timezone_string": "",
  "namespaces": [
    "oembed/1.0",
    "wp/v2",
    "wp-site-health/v1"
  ],
  "authentication": [
    
  ],
  "routes": {
    "/": {
      "namespace": "",
      "methods": [
        "GET"
      ],
      "endpoints": [
        {
          "methods": [
            "GET"
          ],
          "args": {
            "context": {
              "default": "view",
              "required": false
            }
          }
        }
      ],
...

Setting Up Vue.js (Frontend)

We will be using the Vite web development tool to create our Vue 3 application to connect with headless WordPress. You can read more about Vue 3 and Vite development tools.

In this article, we will be building a news blog. To get started, run these commands in your terminal to initialize Vite in a news-blog directory:

npx create-vite-app news-blog
cd news-blog
npm install
npm run dev

Next, open your Vue 3 codebase with any code editor of your choice, such as VSCode, and let’s get our hands dirty with codes.

Consuming WordPress REST API in Vue.js

The WordPress REST API provides endpoints to access different types of content like posts, media files, comments, and users. For instance, to retrieve posts from your site using the REST API, you’d use the endpoint /wp-json/wp/v2/posts:

http://site_name.local/wp-json/wp/v2/posts

Similar endpoints exist for other types of content; you’d just replace /posts with /comments, /media, and so on.

Now, let’s explore how to fetch posts from your WordPress CMS and display them in your Vue.js application.

To achieve this, we’ll utilize the Fetch API (or Axios can be used alternatively). The goal is to fetch data as soon as the application loads and display it. For this purpose, we’ll use the onMounted composition API lifecycle hook.

<script>
  import Posts from './components/Posts.vue';
  import { ref, onMounted } from 'vue';
  export default {
    name: 'App',
    components: {
      Posts,
    },
    setup() {
      const posts = ref([]);

      onMounted(() => {
        const fetchPosts = async () => {
          const res = await fetch(
            'https://site_name.local/wp-json/wp/v2/posts'
          );
          const data = await res.json();
          posts.value = data;
        };
        fetchPosts();
      });

      return {
        posts,
      };
    },
  };
</script>

This code fetches posts from a WordPress site via its REST API using the Fetch API. Upon the application’s loading, it uses the onMounted hook to retrieve this data. The retrieved posts are stored in the posts variable within the App component and then passed as props to the posts component.

<template>
  <div id="app">
    <Posts :wpPosts="posts" />
  </div>
</template>

Display Data from WordPress REST API in Vue.js

Now that the posts array has been fetched from WordPress; you can now loop through the array in the costs component to display all posts:

<template>
    <div class="container">
        <h2>All Posts</h2>
        <div class="posts">
            <div v-for="post in wpPosts" :key="post.id" class="post-card">
                <h3>{{ post.title.rendered }}</h3>
                <div v-html="post.excerpt.rendered"></div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</template>

<script>
    export default {
        name: 'Posts',
        props: {
            wpPosts: {
                type: Array,
                required: true,
            },
        },
    };
</script>

The posts component displays the fetched posts by iterating through the wpPosts array. For each post, it showcases the title and excerpt rendered in HTML format using v-html due to the content’s inherent HTML structure.

The REST API opens up endless possibilities within Vue.js. With access to it, you have the freedom to customize your blog extensively. You can design and style your blog exactly as you envision, leveraging Vue.js to implement any feature or layout without constraints. The flexibility of the REST API empowers you to tailor your blog to your heart’s content.

Deploying Headless WordPress With Kinsta

Lastly, deploying your headless WordPress is made very easy with DevKinsta using the Kinsta hosting service.

To deploy your headless WordPress to Kinsta, click on the Push to Staging button on your DevKinsta dashboard and sign in to Kinsta with your login credentials.

You can learn how to push changes to the staging environment to deploy your headless WordPress to Kinsta hosting services in a single click.

Deploying Your Vue.js Frontend To Kinsta

Finally, you can deploy your Vue.js frontend to our Static Site Hosting for free. This can be done by pushing your code to your preferred Git provider (Bitbucket, GitHub, or GitLab) and then deploying it to Kinsta.

Don’t forget to adjust your headless WordPress endpoint to match your live production environment when testing your application. For instance, if you’ve deployed your WordPress CMS from DevKinsta, your live URL will change from .local to .kinsta.cloud. Updating this endpoint ensures that your application communicates with the live production setup for accurate testing and functionality.

Once your repo is ready, follow these steps to deploy your static site to Kinsta:

1. Log in or create an account to view your MyKinsta dashboard.
2. Authorize Kinsta with your Git provider.
3. Click Static Sites on the left sidebar, then click Add site.
4. Select the repository and the branch you wish to deploy from.
5. Assign a unique name to your site.
6. Add the build settings in the following format:
   • Build command: npm run build
   • Node version: 18.16.0
   • Publish directory: dist

7. Finally, click Create site.

And that’s it! You now have a deployed site within a few seconds. A link is provided to access the deployed version of your site. You can later add your custom domain and SSL certificate if you wish.

As an alternative to Static Site Hosting, you can opt for deploying your static site with Kinsta’s Application Hosting, which provides greater hosting flexibility, a wider range of benefits, and access to more robust features. For example, scalability, customized deployment using a Dockerfile, and comprehensive analytics encompassing real-time and historical data.

FAQ

Is headless WordPress better for SEO than traditional WordPress?

Not automatically. Traditional WordPress with good caching and an SEO plugin is already well-optimized for search engines. Headless WordPress can match or exceed that performance, but only if metadata, sitemaps, and rendering are handled correctly on the frontend. SSG and SSR builds perform well for SEO. A client-side-only SPA with no server rendering is the configuration to avoid.

Can I still use WordPress plugins with a headless setup?

Yes, with limitations. Plugins that work on the backend (Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce, Yoast SEO) function normally and typically expose their data through REST or WPGraphQL extension plugins. Plugins that rely on modifying the WordPress frontend (page builders, theme-dependent plugins, frontend form renderers) won’t transfer to your headless frontend. You’ll need to rebuild that functionality in your JavaScript framework.

What’s the difference between headless and decoupled WordPress?

The terms are often used interchangeably. If there’s a distinction, it’s that decoupled architectures still have a defined frontend system that has been separated from the CMS, while headless means there’s no predefined frontend system at all: you choose whatever technology fits your project. In practice, both terms usually refer to the same approach when people talk about headless WordPress.

Do I need to know JavaScript to build a headless WordPress site?

Yes. The WordPress admin stays the same, but the entire frontend of a headless site is built in JavaScript using frameworks like React, Next.js, Vue, or Astro. You’ll also need to understand API requests, JSON data handling, and at least the basics of how your chosen framework manages routing and data fetching. Headless WordPress is a developer-focused approach and isn’t suitable for users who manage their own sites without coding experience.

How much does headless WordPress cost compared to traditional WordPress?

More. You’re running two environments instead of one: a WordPress backend and a separate frontend application, which means additional hosting costs, more developer time to build and maintain both, and a more complex deployment workflow. For teams with the technical resources to manage it, the performance and flexibility benefits can justify the cost. For smaller teams or solo site owners, the added complexity rarely makes it worthwhile.

Can I use WooCommerce with headless WordPress?

Yes. WooCommerce exposes its product catalog, cart, and order functionality through the REST API. There’s also a WooGraphQL plugin for teams using WPGraphQL. That said, some WooCommerce extensions that depend on the traditional WordPress theme layer may not work out of the box in a headless setup, so it’s worth auditing plugin compatibility before committing to this approach for an ecommerce build.

Summary

Headless WordPress and the benefits it comes with are here to stay for a while. Its popularity will only continue to grow as more developers and site owners come to understand the upsides of a headless option.

In this guide, we’ve introduced you to headless WordPress’ benefits, pros, and cons, and we’ve shown you how to build and deploy your first headless WordPress with DevKinsta. You’re now well on your way to having your headless WordPress implementation.