Need help understanding how WP+DB is set up with Frontity

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1

We’ve been looking for a more modern WP dev architecture and I just ran through the Frontity step-by-step guide and I’m intrigued.

I’m no React whiz but I can see that the frontity.settings.js file is pulling WP data from https://test.frontity.org – my question is, if I wanted to set up a new WordPress install and build a custom theme using the Frontity framework – what would this setup look like? How would this be run on a local and then hosted server?

From the tutorial here, it looks like the project we are creating is simply a “skin” for the data being pulled from the external resource https://test.frontity.org – essentially working with two different projects (one being the WP install at https://test.frontity.org and the other being the project you’re working on locally).

How would one go about setting up a single, fresh install of WP and then using Frontity to build a custom theme using React and WP as a headless CMS (so that my team’s devs could work in React and my team’s marketers could work in the WordPress CMS – all on the same single website)?

Thank you

2

Found this and this which clarifies the architecture a bit, I’m leaning towards Embedded mode so we can retain the SEO benefits and usability of WP and avoid having two paid hosting accounts (essentially retaining the “WP experience” while our dev team can work in Frontity). Considering the cons of embedded mode (WP bootstrap process, additional routing), does embedded mode negate the performance benefits of building with this React app platform?

Lastly, for decoupled mode – since you’re essentially duplicating content on a 2nd server, are there SEO implications here to consider (primarily content being indexed as duplicate content – does the secondary domain need canonicals or a server-wide noindex/nofollow set in place)?