November 30, 2025 • Paul Peery

The Headless WordPress Guide: Fast Sites, No Tears

Cartoon WordPress logo with a crown running past servers & clouds. Text: "The Headless WordPress Guide: Fast Sites, No Tears.

My WordPress Site Was a Slug, So I Chopped Its Head Off

I have a confession to make. For years, my relationship with WordPress has been… complicated. I love its friendly dashboard, the easy content creation, and the feeling of power it gives you. But I hated the performance. It felt like no matter what I did, my site loaded with the enthusiasm of a teenager asked to do chores. I spent ages trying to kick my slow WordPress site’s butt into gear, fighting everything from bloated plugins to that awful content-shifting wobble known as CLS. And while I made progress, I knew there had to be a better way.

That’s when I discovered the beautifully brutal solution: going headless. It sounds dramatic, but it’s the best decision I ever made for my web projects. I kept the part of WordPress I loved (the backend) and replaced the slow, clunky part (the frontend theme) with a lightning-fast, modern JavaScript framework. This is the story of how I did it, and it’s the only headless wordpress tutorial you’ll need to do it, too.

What in the World is “Headless” WordPress?

Think of traditional WordPress as a single, inseparable unit. The backend where you write posts and the frontend theme that displays them are stuck together like superglue. “Headless” simply means we’re breaking that bond. We use WordPress only for managing content and use a completely separate, purpose-built application to display that content to users.

The benefits are staggering:

  • Blazing Speed: Your frontend is no longer weighed down by the WordPress theme engine, PHP processing, and a dozen plugins. It’s pure, optimized code. Say goodbye to users complaining about lag.
  • Fort Knox Security: Your WordPress admin is hidden from the public. Hackers can’t easily find your login page or exploit theme vulnerabilities because the public-facing site is completely decoupled.
  • Ultimate Flexibility: You’re not stuck with the WordPress theme structure. You can build whatever you want, however you want, using modern tools. It’s liberating!

The Dream Team: Next.js and GraphQL

To pull this off, you need two key players: a frontend framework and a way to get your data. My dream team for building a next.js wordpress site is, you guessed it, Next.js and GraphQL.

Next.js is a framework built on React that is obsessed with performance. It pre-renders pages into static HTML, which is the fastest way to serve a website. It’s built for the future of the web, embracing powerful concepts like React Server Components that make sites even more efficient.

GraphQL is our messenger. It’s an API query language that lets us ask our WordPress backend for the exact data we need, nothing more and nothing less. It’s far more efficient than the traditional WordPress REST API. The plugin we’ll use, WPGraphQL, turns your WordPress site into a data-serving powerhouse.

See It In Action

The Step-by-Step WPGraphQL Guide to Freedom

Alright, enough talk. Let’s get our hands dirty and build this thing. Follow these steps, and you’ll have a basic headless site up and running in no time.

Step 1: Prep Your WordPress Backend

First, you need a standard WordPress installation. It can be a fresh one or an existing site. Once you’re logged into the admin dashboard:

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New.
  2. Search for and install “WPGraphQL” by WPGraphQL. Activate it.
  3. Search for and install “WPGrahQL Smart Cache”. Activate it. This will help with performance.

That’s it! Your WordPress site now has a GraphQL endpoint, usually at yourdomain.com/graphql. You’ll also see a new “GraphQL” tab in your WordPress menu where you can use a built-in tool called GraphiQL to test queries.

Step 2: Spin Up Your Next.js Frontend

Now for the fun part. Open your computer’s terminal and run the following command to create a new Next.js project. I’m calling mine `headless-frontend`.

npx create-next-app@latest headless-frontend

Follow the prompts (I recommend using TypeScript and the App Router). Once it’s done, navigate into the new directory:

cd headless-frontend

Step 3: Connect Next.js to WordPress

We need to tell our Next.js app how to talk to our WordPress backend. Create a new file in the root of your project called .env.local and add your WordPress GraphQL API endpoint URL to it.

WORDPRESS_GRAPHQL_ENDPOINT='http://your-wp-domain.com/graphql'

Now, let’s create a function to fetch data. Create a folder named `lib` in your project’s root, and inside it, a file named `api.js`.


// lib/api.js
export async function fetchAPI(query = '', { variables } = {}) {
  const headers = { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' };

  if (process.env.WORDPRESS_AUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN) {
    headers['Authorization'] = `Bearer ${process.env.WORDPRESS_AUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN}`;
  }

  const res = await fetch(process.env.WORDPRESS_GRAPHQL_ENDPOINT, {
    method: 'POST',
    headers,
    body: JSON.stringify({
      query,
      variables,
    }),
  });

  const json = await res.json();
  if (json.errors) {
    console.error(json.errors);
    throw new Error('Failed to fetch API');
  }
  return json.data;
}

Step 4: Fetch and Display Your Posts

Let’s replace the default Next.js homepage with a list of our WordPress posts. Open `app/page.js` (or `page.tsx`) and replace its contents with this:


// app/page.js
import { fetchAPI } from '../lib/api';

export default async function Home() {
  const data = await fetchAPI(`
    query AllPosts {
      posts {
        nodes {
          id
          title
          slug
          excerpt
        }
      }
    }
  `);

  const posts = data?.posts?.nodes;

  return (
    <main>
      <h2>My Latest Posts</h2>
      <div>
        {posts.map((post) => (
          <div key={post.id}>
            <h3>{post.title}</h3>
            <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.excerpt }} />
            <a href={`/blog/${post.slug}`}
              >Read more</a
            >
          </div>
        ))}
      </div>
    </main>
  );
}

Start your development server by running `npm run dev` in your terminal. If you visit `http://localhost:3000` in your browser, you should see the titles and excerpts of your WordPress posts! How cool is that?

Was It Worth It? Absolutely.

Building a headless site is more than just a technical exercise. It’s a fundamental shift in how you build for the web. You get the world’s most popular CMS for content management and a cutting-edge framework for a flawless user experience. Your site will be faster, more secure, and infinitely more flexible. You’ll finally be free from wrestling with theme files and can focus on building amazing digital experiences. This isn’t just a trend; it’s one of the key skills you’ll need if you want to know how to code without crying in the years to come. Give it a try—your users (and your sanity) will thank you.