The WordPress REST API As Connector

Josh Pollock - July 14, 2016

Earlier this year I gave a talk on what having the WordPress REST API means. I actually gave the talk twice, once I. Jacksonville and once in San Diego and both times I started by asking why we needed a REST API.

Both times I asked, someone in the audience said that the WordPress REST API would help us display content from multiple sites in one location. I agreed.

Both times I asked, someone in the audience said that the WordPress REST API would help us decouple content management form the front-end. I agreed.

Tomorrow, I will be at WPCampus, a conference for WordPress in higher-ed and this is what I am talking about. I’m talking about using the WordPress REST API to show content from multiple sites is one central location.

I hope this will help solve problems for educational institutions with many sites, managed by different departments, that want to share that content throughout their online presence. But, these strategies will also help organizations of any type solve scaling issues.

In addition, companies with multiple brands can use these strategies to share content between different sites and different brands. In fact, half of this talk is based on code I wrote to solve that problem for my own company, Caldera Labs.

Each of our brands has its own WordPress site. Our central site is a static HTML site, hosted on Github for free. It loads in about half a second, and has no database. Instead, we pull content via the WordPress REST API, using jQuery AJAX from multiple sites.

Photo by: Jakub SejkoraThe WordPress REST API is changing ways we use WordPress and ways we consume WordPress data. I look forward to learning more about how others use this new technology and continuing to teach about how to use it as well as using it.

As I prepare for my 6th WordPress conference so far this year, I’m reminded that WordPress is a connector. Yes, the REST API provides a way to connect WordPress sites together and WordPress to other technologies. But, more importantly, WordPress can help us reach our goals when we have the right tools, and helps connect us to awesome people in the community đŸ™‚

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