Kirk Schwenkler is a Solutions Architect for the Developer Platform at Cloudflare. Lots of our architecture at WP Engine uses Cloudflare in different ways, as I’m sure many other tech companies do as well, so we wanted to have Kirk on to unpack some of the interesting things that Cloudflare can do for you and your projects. We dive into some of the…

Daniel Roe is on the framework team for Nuxt, a Vue-based full-stack framework. Some of our most popular content is on Nuxt and headless WordPress. A new version of Nuxt, Nuxt 3, reached a stable release late in 2022. This new version comes packed with feature upgrades and Daniel has graciously agreed to join us to help us learn more about this new…

Jonny Harris is a London-based WordPress developer specializing in large-scale WordPress projects and runs the Spacedmonkey consultancy. Jonny has been developing websites for over 10 years. He is most known for his open-source work in WordPress core, where he’s worked on things like Gutenberg, multisite, and the REST API. His list of former client…

In this episode, Fran and Jeff catch up with Jason Bahl, the creator of WPGraphQL to discuss a new caching extension for WPGraphQL. Jason is a figure in the headless WordPress ecosystem that likely needs no introduction, but the group discusses some of their early experiences with headless WordPress. WPGraphQL Smart Cache makes a user's GraphQL que…

In this podcast episode, Fran and Jeff talk with Rob Humar, the head of web development at Dexertos, the world's largest esports publishing platform. As a media company, Dexertos does around 60 million monthly page views. Rob walks us through some of the details of the Dexertos tech stack, which includes Next.js and headless WordPress using WPGraph…

In this episode, Fran and Jeff talk with Sam Bhagwat, the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Gatsby Cloud, about the modular web and Sam’s new book. The group spends some time talking about Gatsby’s origins and how it serves the use cases of the content web. During the conversation, Sam provides a good overview of the architectural patterns t…

In this episode, Jeff and Fran chat with Salma Alam-Naylor, a Staff Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, about the state of the JAMstack ecosystem. We kick off the discussion by exploring the values of learning in public with tech blogs and dig into Salma's background in music and teaching. You can read Salma's evolving thoughts on frameworks …

In this episode, Fran and Jeff talk to Fred Schott, the co-creator of the Astro framework. Astro is a newer JavaScript framework that focuses on creating super fast content-focused sites. There is a ton of love in the JS community for Astro, and we dig into Astro's origin stories and some of Fred's background with build tools. Astro aims to reduce …

In this episode, Fran and Jeff talk with Chris Wiegman, the Engineering Manager of the team working on WP Engine's Faust framework. During this quarter, the Faust framework has undergone a massive overhaul and Chris spends some time sharing details on those updates: Moving from GQty to Apollo for data fetching Implementing WP routing and template h…

In this episode, Fran and Jeff catch up with Colby Fayock, a previous guest and a Senior Developer Experience Engineer at Cloudinary. This episode touches on how Cloudinary can help developers offload, optimize, and transform images using their APIs or use their WordPress plugin for a native integration with WP admin. The group discusses how they s…

In this episode, Fran and Jeff catch up with Matt Landers, the former manager of WP Engine's Dev Rel team, and discuss his new role in developer relations at Google Analytics. We take a deep dive into some of the major differences between the current iteration of Google Analytics (UA) and the next evolution of the platform (GA4). PSA: The current v…

In this episode, Fran and Jeff talk with Alexa Spalato, the co-founder of Gatsby WP Themes, a company focused on building out Gatsby themes made to work with headless WordPress. We learn how Alexa got involved in tech, discuss some of the details of the headless theme market, and get some updates about her future as a Developer Relations Engineer i…

By WP Engine Developer Relations

In this episode, Fran and Jeff talk with Lee Robinson, the VP of Developer Experience at Vercel. We take a look at some new or now stable features in Next.js, like middleware, the image component, and ISR. Both Vercel and WP Engine support a lot of open source projects as a part of their strategies, and we dig into why that's important and good for…

In this episode, we get things up and running for Season 3, with just a few changes. First, we've rebranded the podcast slightly by changing the name. Second, we have new co-hosts for the show. In this intro episode we dig into Fran and Jeff's backgrounds and talk about their developer origin stories. We're really excited about some the guest we ha…

We close out the year with Lee Robinson, the director of developer relations at Vercel. Lee talks about the current Next.js landscape within headless development, Rich Harris joining Vercel to work on SvelteKit, and whether Vercel will shift their frontends more towards SvelteKit. Headless WordPress resources: https://developers.wpengine.com Links:…

Alex Moon stops by to hype Gatsby 4. How did Gatsby 4 an up to 10x rendering speed? How is Gatsby future-proofing against React? They also talk about how well Gatsby plays with Faust.js. Links: What's new in Gatsby 4 Rendering patterns podcast episode Want more headless content? Go to https://developers.wpengine.com/…

Kellen and Grace bring in WPEngine's new Developer Relator Brian Gardner, Founder of StudioPress, Co-creator Genesis, to talk about building development communities. Links: briangardner.com Twitter @bgardnerBy Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

The De{Code} podcast welcomes our new host, Grace Erixon. Kellen and Grace talk about Grace's development history.By Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

Will bids the De{Code} podcast adieu and reflects on his headless development journey.By Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

The DevRel team invites JSON Bahl back onto the pod to discuss Gutenberg. Jason talks about the benefits of Gutenberg, what's lacking in Gutenberg's current implementation, and what implementations exist for rendering Gutenberg in headless WordPress. Links: Gutenberg and Decoupled ApplicationsBy Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

Solutions Architect Alex Moon stops by the De{Code} pod to talk rendering in front-end development. Links: The When and Where of Rendering React's server components Netlify's Distributed Persistent Rendering (DPR)By Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

Will and Kellen give their predictions and dreams for Next.js conference 2021. What will happen on the 5th anniversary of Next.js? Increased support for Core Web Vitals? Support for Deno? What about running the Next.js API at build time?By Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

The Atlas Content Modeler teams hop on the pod to discuss the new open-source tool. Links: Github: https://github.com/wpengine/atlas-content-modeler https://developers.wpengine.com/blog/what-is-atlas-content-modelerBy Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

Kellen and Will welcome Phil Crum from the Web Agency 10up. They discuss whether 10up plans to go all-in on headless WordPress over traditional, how the discovery phase with a client determines whether headless is right for them, and using Gutenberg in a headless architecture. Links: Phil Crumm website: https://philcrumm.com/…

Have you ever heard of Core Web Vitals? Kellen and Will teach you all the basics, including how to get a good Core Web Vital score, Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. They also break down how to measure your website against Core Web Vital principles and what tools could help you out. After you listen, don't fo…

Kellen and Will give a crash course in styling for the web. They go over traditional CSS, SASS, and CSS -in-JS. They also discuss how front-end frameworks account for styling and where UI libraries such as Charka and Material fit into the modern web.By Kellen Mace, Will Johnston

Kellen interviews Greg Rickaby, Director of Engineering at WebDevStudios. Greg explains why WebDevStudios embraced headless development (1:30), how an open-source contribution to Next.JS lead to the creation of WebDevStudios' Next.JS starter kit (9:30), and how WebDevStudios' might utilize Atlas and other technologies in the future (1:13:12). Links…

Kellen and Will welcome Jacob Arriola from Zeek to discuss Headless WooCommerce. Jacob tells us why WooCommerce over other e-commerce solutions such as Shopify (4.18), how WPGraphQL and WooGraphQL can be used together (19.10), and the experience of building an e-commerce site the headless way and what tradeoffs had to be made to accommodate WooComm…

The team announces the new open-source WP Engine Headless WordPress framework, Faust.js ™. Upcoming Event: Learn how to set up, build, and deploy your headless WordPress site with Faust.js and Atlas - https://events.wpengine.com/event/092db3a9-7e28-41d2-ad7e-cbb16e653eb2/websitePage:5bbe0ca6-fd0c-4e77-b99b-de21baff9062 Resources: Faust.js site: htt…

We invite Cassidy, Ben, and Tara from the Netlify DevRel team to talk about using the Jamstack architecture with Headless WordPress. Cassidy mentions a few examples she's seen of React + Headless WordPress sites. Tara shows off a site that uses "Jamgular" (Jamstack with Angular). Ben breaks down how developers are using Vue in conjunction with head…

Did you know you can have custom content types in WordPress? Will and Kellen breakdown what content types WordPress gives you out of the box (1.01), how you can extend the types of content in WordPress(21.50), and the Atlas tool that could make creating custom content easier(54.30). Links from this episode: WordPress database: https://deliciousbrai…

To kick off the new season of the De{Code} podcast, Will and Kellen have an epic conversation about authentication in headless WordPress. They give an overview of all the authentication strategies that exist in WordPress (6.40), a breakdown of how to leverage WordPress's cookie-based authentication (37.18), where in the stack auth occurs (52.11) an…

As the DevRel team says goodbye to the esteemed Matt Landers, Matt and Will introduce the De{Code} community to Atlas. They explain what Atlas is, Node Engine, custom content types, and the future Atlas framework. Atlas: wpengine.com/atlasBy Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Drew Baker, technical director of Webby award-nominated web agency Funkhaus joins the podcast to talk headless. He talks about Funkhaus's experience deploying headless WordPress for clients with everything from WP GraphQL and Nuxt, how Drew's clients enjoy their fancy decoupled sites, and what might make headless more enticing to clients. Drew's Gi…

We pit WPGraphQL and REST API against each other. Which has better performance? How easy are caching and file uploads? Which one works best with headless WordPress?By Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

The DevRel teams welcomes Colby Fayock, a developer advocate from Applitools. Colby breaks down his Next WordPress Starter kit, discusses the benefits and drawbacks of headless, and talks about upcoming tech he's excited about. Colby's Starter: https://github.com/colbyfayock/next-wordpress-starter Colby's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/colbyfayoc…

Matt, Will, and Kellen give a quick overview of state management. They answer what "state" and "stateless" are, why you need states, and compare state management solutions.By Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Last year, the Babel Core team published a blog with the title, "Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?" The De{Code} hosts use Babel as a starting point to discuss the challenges and benefits of open-source development, how such ventures can remain funded, Matt and Will's Platypi experience, and open-source maintainer burno…

At Jamstack Conf 2020, a fireside chat between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann turned into a heated debate about WordPress and Jamstack. Matt Landers, Will Johnston, and Kellen Mace attempt to break down each of the other Matts' arguments, leading a discussion about when to use traditional WordPress over headless and …

It's the first battle of the frameworks, as up and comer Next.js goes head-to-head with Gatsby. Matt, Will, and Kellen compare each framework's rendering options, plugin ecosystems, routing, and hosting options. Who will win this epic match-up?By Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Today, the DevRel team welcomes their newest member, WordPress developer Kellen Mace. Matt, Will, and Kellen give a breakdown of their careers, share how they started in coding, and impart some wisdom they've learned through it all.By Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Matt and Will welcome their second guest to the podcast, Hillary Whitworth. They talk about how she started in front-end development, the importance of mentors, and the common pitfalls of utilities. Shout-outs: Hillary's Twitter Jack Herrington Kent C DoddsBy Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

The world of JavaScript seems is so vast that it can seem impenetrable. Luckily, Matt and Will are here to give a tour of the JavaScript ecosystem, as well as some recommendations for where to start when building a new site with the language. Shout-outs: Node.js webpackBy Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Matt and Will spare no expense when speaking of their love of TypeScript. They discuss how TypeScript came to be, what problems it solves, and Will gives an epic breakdown of advanced types. Shout-outs: Anders Visual Studio Code TypeScript documentation BasaratBy Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Matt and Will discuss the background and philosophies of API-First development, the shift away from REST, React components, and APIs, and how headless development allows for an API-First model. Shout-outs: Headless tutorials and contentBy Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Join Matt Landers and Will Johnston for a comprehensive of the current state of React development, including the history React, how to React has been adopted in the wider development landscape, and some quick tips and tricks about how to get started. Shout-outs: Dan Abramov Server Components DemoBy Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer

Jason "JSON" Bahl joins the DevRel team to talk WPGraphQL, its beginnings, and where it might go in the future.By Matt Landers, Will Johnston, Nate Archer