NuxtPress: A Hybrid Website Platform

by Matthew Hinton, Senior Developer

NuxtPress is a web development stack created by 2wav that combines WordPress for content management with the Nuxt framework for browser display. We primarily use NuxtPress for content-heavy sites where the client is making frequent changes, and SEO is important. The client can use the familiar WordPress editor to create and manage content. We can use the development tools we like best for custom programming and our designer Gretchen Wieshuber is not restricted by WordPress limitations.

For example, the Hunt Illinois website required quite a few features that couldn’t be achieved effectively with plugins, such as the Hunt Planner, the Permit Finder, and others planned for the future. 2wav is more than capable of writing custom plugins if that is appropriate. In fact, Hunt Illinois contains custom plugin integration for the hunting season calendar and event calendar. We did a good bit of work to customize the calendar plugin to satisfy the requirements of our client, Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

We faced a learning curve when we first experimented with this hybrid system. Setting up a “headless” WordPress installation and figuring out how to use the GraphQL plugin to query the data was a challenge, but we are now experts at getting the whole system to work smoothly.

WordPress always has ongoing maintenance concerns. Everything must be kept up to date for maximum security. There are security benefits to NuxtPress, because the WordPress application is hidden from the public, and therefore insulated from attack.

Nuxt renders content on the server and then sends complete pages to the browser, which provides superior SEO to single page applications. When SEO is important, Nuxt is our tool of choice.

NuxtPress is not the right approach for all websites. Sometimes standard WordPress is the way to go. But if you have a site that needs custom programming, or an out of the ordinary design, or a lot of content that changes regularly, we can offer this alternative.

My next blog post will discuss the client-side authoring experience. That will be followed by a technical post about how we use NuxtJS and GraphQL.