๐—ช๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฑ๐—ฃ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ผ ๐—›๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—ฑ๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜€: ๐—ฅ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—˜๐—ป๐—ด๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ฒ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ด ๐——๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป๐˜€

Headless WordPress plans look clean on paper. Reality is harder.

Our client had a WooCommerce site with strong SEO. We kept the data layer. We only changed how the site shows data.

We chose WP REST API. We skipped WPGraphQL. This removed extra plugins. It kept the WordPress install lean. Next.js server components fetch the data.

Most migrations fail the user. Clients love their admin dashboards. Moving them to a raw analytics tool feels like a step back.

We built a light dashboard in Next.js. It shows:

The client sees the same data in one tab. This lowers stress.

Three choices kept technical debt low:

The goal is to make WordPress invisible. When a client stops opening the admin panel, you win.

Do not start with the tech stack. Ask about workflows. What does your team open every morning? Ensure those tools work on day one.

Source: https://dev.to/jwk19/from-native-wordpress-to-headless-the-real-engineering-decisions-behind-a-production-migration-2b1j