Local Launches Atlas Add-on for Sandboxing Headless WordPress Sites – WP Tavern

Local, a well-liked WordPress growth device maintained by WP Engine, has launched a new add-on for shortly spinning up headless WordPress websites on its new Atlas platform.

The corporate has been working to seize the headless WordPress internet hosting market over the previous few years, investing in a brand new staff devoted to constructing out its headless choices geared toward builders. It is likely one of the first managed hosts to supply a packaged product that handles all of the dependencies and configuration required to launch a headless web site.

The brand new add-on is named Atlas: Headless WP. It makes it simple for customers to create a web site with a Node.js frontend that makes use of WP Engine’s Faust.js headless framework for WordPress. It may be discovered inside the most recent model of Native beneath the Add-ons menu.

The Atlas add-on watches any modifications made to frontend code and compiles them after a file is saved. The add-on’s assist docs have a information to the folder construction for the headless websites it creates:

• app – Accommodates the recordsdata of a typical WordPress web site. Any modifications made right here will probably be mirrored within the WordPress backend.
• app-node – The Javascript frontend which the Node.js course of is watching and compiling.

The Atlas add-on provides customers entry to a few blueprints that embody starter code, plugins, content material fashions, and web page construction to jumpstart web site growth. One creates a barebones web site with simply the scaffolding essential to get began. The second blueprint is for a portfolio web site and features a weblog and pages to record initiatives. The third blueprint seems to be very comparable however simply features a weblog and menu with no portfolio.

You will need to observe that Atlas can solely be enabled on new websites in Native, because the app has no option to convert current websites right into a headless web site.

Websites constructed utilizing the add-on are supported within the import/export web site workflows, however the firm’s help staff confirmed that Atlas websites can solely be hosted at WP Engine. This is likely one of the chief drawbacks of the framework.

For that reason, the Atlas add-on basically capabilities type of like a gross sales funnel for WP Engine, since websites produced utilizing it aren’t transportable to be hosted anyplace else. It does supply a straightforward option to experiment with headless WordPress to see the way it all works collectively. It’s additionally handy for WP Engine prospects who need to use it to create new headless websites with much less work organising and configuring them.

The Atlas add-on for Native remains to be in beta, so it has a couple of tough edges. Customers can get assist for his or her help questions by creating a subject within the Atlas: Headless WP class of the group boards.