188 - Headless v's not headless

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Debate with Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley

Setting up the Debate

This topic was suggested by Fayaz Ahmed. He probably never thought that foolish non-developers like us would even try to tackle a weighty topic like this… but why not!

We guess most who listen to the WP Builds podcast are similar to us and more knowledgeable folk can put us right if we stray too far from the truth!

A Headless WordPress is, in simple terms, when you separate the back-end of WordPress (the admin dashboard side, the PHP and database stuff) from the front-end (the website visitors see).

This is something that has only taken off because the REST API was bundled into WordPress.

Nathan is going to take the argument for headless as he has some experience (using Strattic hosting) and David will be the luddite who is keen to dismiss anything new which he does not fully understand.

So with that in mind, what are the main points in favour of headless and not headless...

Headless - Nathan

It could be the future - one day there could be a headless Woocommerce - maybe if all wish hard enough
Multi-channel content publishing - through the REST API being able to send content/data to other places (Facebook and others)
Simpler redesigns - no need to copy the existing site
Increased performance
Better scalability
Tighter security
Better performance
Can have mixed developer skills (Angular, Python, Laravel ) working one project
Technically the front end can be moved to another CMS

Not Headless - David

Only horseman of the apocalypse should be headless!
No WYSIWYG
Advanced programing need and skilled maintenance
Speed - we can just serve html via caching plugins
Security- minimal issue if update monitoring and choosing plugins wisely
Isn’t it security through obscurity as the backend is somewhere? (no says Nathan, the backend is completely switched off when not in use)
If it's just for the purpose of having a html site why not build a html site?
If it is because you are a clever JS developer - why use WordPress in the first place
Not many plugins work with this set up - forms, WooCommerce all the good stuff of WordPress
The plugins on the WP repository to help you go headless don’t have high number of installs, so are they reliable?
The cost of static site generators will probably rule it out for many clients