Going headless with WordPress gives you content freedom — but you still need to build the front-end, and that is where many projects stall. This session walks through using Silex (https://www.silex.me), an open-source visual website builder, to create a fully decoupled front-end that pulls content from WordPress via WPGraphQL — without writing a custom React app.
The pitch for headless WordPress is compelling: decouple the content management from the presentation layer, gain performance and flexibility, deploy the front-end anywhere. The gap in practice is that building a custom JavaScript front-end requires significant development effort — and for many agencies and freelancers, it makes the architecture impractical for mid-sized projects.
Silex offers an alternative entry point. It is an open-source, no-code visual builder that generates static sites via 11ty. It connects to WordPress headless through WPGraphQL, letting content editors and designers build the front-end visually without giving up the decoupled architecture. The output is a clean static site — no React runtime, no build complexity for the end user — that can be deployed to any static host.
In this session, we will set up a minimal decoupled stack: WordPress with WPGraphQL as the content API, Silex as the visual front-end layer. We will walk through how Silex queries GraphQL data, maps it to visual components, and publishes a static site. We will also look at where this approach fits — and where it does not — compared to full JavaScript frameworks.
Attendees should know: basic WordPress admin, what headless CMS means.
Attendees will know after: how to set up a working Silex + WPGraphQL stack, how to visually build pages that pull CMS content, and how to deploy the result as a static site.
Audience
Intermediate
Session Category
Content Management and Commerce
Speaker(s)