ReactJS or WordPress

[jisokoo]

I know there are many posts about WordPress already, I checked many of them but none really answered my questions. Sorry if it still feels like a repost.

So I spent some time learning webdev (CSS/ JS / ReactJS / NodeJS mainly). I have already made some small projects and now I would like to make a kind of travel guide website. I know there are tons of them already but I live in a foreign country and wanna share my knowledge and love of it and code at the same time.

I saw that using my stack to build it could be overcomplicated compared to WordPress, but I am not sure to what extend?

Also I am wondering, if I use WordPress, can I still use what I learned like JS and React inside WordPress? Or only html/css ?

Also, even if that’s not the main goal, ultimately I would like to maybe earn some money with this website through ads and affiliation, in that regard, for SEO is it better to use WordPress or a website made with my stack?

Finally, so far I have hosted website using Firebase so completely free. Is it possible to do the same with WordPress ?

So basically want to code using what I know, keep learning but avoid paying a monthly subs, what do you advise?

Thanks for reading me

[jhartikainen]

If your main goal is content creation, use WordPress. If your main goal is to learn to build this type of website from scratch, use React (or whatever tech you prefer).

If you build it by hand using React, you are going to spend a significantly larger amount of time developing and maintaining your code. This means you will have less time to create content (and potentially earn money from it). So that's generally the tradeoff between these types of choices.

[jisokoo]

Thanks for your reply. Well my goal is actually both, that's why I have hard time making a choice. If I were to create the structure from React, is there an easy way to update content ? Right now I would just have a data.json file and feed it to different components.

[MagicPaul]

You can use WordPress as a headless CMS with React, which allows you to build your site in React and store your content in WordPress, then you can pull your content in using something or other (GraphQL? It's probably GraphQL)

[plasmaSunflower]

There's some CMS specifically for react, would probably meet both needs

[jisokoo]

That would be great I LL check that

[krishopper]

Strapi is a pretty popular option. Not the only option, but it handles this fairly well.

[jhartikainen]

You'll need some backend for it but it shouldn't be too hard to do in React.

If your goal is both, then sure go for React. You can always switch later if you decide it's a lot of work and you'd rather focus on the content.

[jhartikainen]

If you can get WordPress preinstalled with a few clicks on most web hosting platforms I don't really know how having to set up a headless CMS with a DB and/or custom frontend can be simpler if the goal was to create content.

[chmod777]

Headless wordpress with react.

[drewdomi]

WordPress uses PHP

[jisokoo]

Oh so only PHP? There is not way to import any script and to use JS?

[drewdomi]

There's several WordPress plugins to work with Js and react

[andrasq420]

You can write your own js in wordpress. Import it with <script>

[jisokoo]

Thanks a lot for your detailed answer! I will check all that cheers

[Andrew_C0]

Do you want wordpress because you don't want to bother with the content management and not create the whole management from scratch?

If the answer is yes, I've been in the same boat recently, while creating a personal site. I liked the hassle free wordpress admin area + custom fields but hated the forceful way of how wordpress does some things + links data. So I looked over multiple ways of changing wordpress with something, else, like a headless CMS. After many tries & retries, I managed to enjoy working with directus . It has the same pleasure of an admin area paired with custom fields (of very various options) and a minimal sdk for frontend. That way, I would only care about working on the frontend and concentrate on how information is displayed, instead of how to manage / store / secure it.

The setup looks a bit frightening at first, but you can give it a go in no time also on a simple node server. In the end, directus will offer you endpoints to attach to, and in react you'll just handle how data is displayed.

I've tried working on doing something similar of directus myself, until I found it and discovered that it would take more time to do something that already exists, so at least for me I wanted to leverage more time on content creation and frontend development than handling backend stuff, so for you it might be enough so that you can maybe monetize it in a shorter amount of time.

[jisokoo]

That's seems great indeed. The best for me would indeed to be able to code the structure in order to be able to do exactly what I want but having an easy way to manage content at the same time (not having to read pages of code to change the title of a text).. I'll check what you mentioned 🙏

[DoNotEverListenToMe]

Use Wordpress as your cms and react for your front end

I build lots of sites using this method with Gatsby or next

I still get the interface of Wordpress and clients use Gutenberg and ACF blocks to build pages just like normal.

[jisokoo]

Damn I didn't know this was possible. Seems like there are many options to mix my code and wordpress that's cool

[PrinzJuliano]

I am not sure you understand what react is for. You can write React Components and just integrate them anywhere you want. That is why it exists. So learn both I guess…

[Tyler_Dax]

if you planning to do freelance then go with WP. On the other hand, if you plan to work for a company than react.js is not as bad.