The WordPress Dashboard as Mission Control: This Portfolio as an Example

If you explore this portfolio, with its 3D galaxy, the room and the mini-games, you’d hardly think of WordPress. Yet all the content you see, the projects and these very notes, is loaded and edited from a WordPress dashboard. It’s what’s known as “headless” WordPress.

What does headless mean?

A traditional WordPress site does two jobs: it stores the content and also displays it, with a visual theme. In a headless setup those are separated. WordPress becomes just the place where information is entered and organized, and another technology, Next.js in my case, displays it with complete design freedom. They talk through an API: the site asks WordPress for the data and presents it its own way.

What’s managed from the dashboard

• Projects: a custom content type with custom fields (built with Advanced Custom Fields) for technologies and links to the repository and documentation.
• Blog notes: like this one, with a GitHub link when relevant.
• Languages: every piece of content exists in Spanish and English, linked with Polylang, so the site knows which is the translation of which.
• Publishing order: a custom setting to decide the order projects appear in, independent of their date.

Why do it this way

• Design freedom: the front end can be as creative as it wants, without a theme’s limitations.
• A familiar dashboard: adding or fixing content is as simple as in any WordPress site.
• Security: the dashboard is far less exposed, with unnecessary features like comments turned off.
• Speed: the site is built with modern technologies designed to load fast.

Who is it for?

For projects where design and experience take center stage, but content changes often and has to be editable by someone who doesn’t code. The best of both worlds: the convenience of WordPress and the freedom of a custom-built site.