How to Create a WordPress-Powered Angular Website

Getting Started with WordPress and Angular

WordPress is a popular, open-source content management system (CMS) that can be used to create a wide range of websites. A key feature of WordPress is that it can be used as a headless CMS.

Using a headless WordPress eCommerce CMS allows you to manage your content with WordPress and use a different technology (such as Angular) to build the front-end of your website. This means you can create a highly customized user experience without sacrificing the power and convenience of WordPress as a CMS.

Angular is a JavaScript framework that makes it easy to build and maintain web applications. By combining WordPress and Angular, you can create a single-page website or CMS-powered Angular website. This combination gives you access to WordPress's content management tools and plugins. In short, combining Angular and WordPress can help you create the website you want.

How Does a Headless CMS Work?

A headless solution works by separating the back-end database from the front-facing representation of the website. This separation is what allows other front-end technologies to be integrated via an API and used as the front-facing representation. This is useful because some applications are built and optimized as front-end applications and don't have back-end capability, so need to be implemented onto a headless ERP/CMS combo

With the ability to integrate systems together, you have greater flexibility for creating the best user interface and the same content can be accessed by multiple front-end applications.

Steps to Integrate Angular and WordPress

To start, you'll need to install:

• Node JS
• Node Package Manager

You can install these through Windows installers using download links to the latest software versions.

After Angular is established, you can start navigation of the Projects Folder to create the first project. To do create a folder, type the following command into the directory:

ng new my-app

Enter the name of the folder you created. Then type:

ng serve

This command will help you get the first skeleton app to run on localhost:4200 through default.

Building Your WordPress – Angular Website

Generation of Components and the Apps’ Backbone Building:

To build the application, you'll need to create specific components through an Angular tool known as Angular CLI, using an included official starter kit.

Then, you'll create the first four components: Header, Footer, Category, and Single, in that order. The header is the title that goes at the "head" or top of the content. The footer, of course, goes at the "foot" or end of the content. The category and single components will be holding the category and single templates.

When you use the ng generate component command, it will create a folder that contains the HTML template and stylesheet for your component. In addition to these files, the command will add the component to the app module file and declare it in the declarations array. This allows the component to be used in your application.

There are two ways to integrate Angular into the headless WordPress.

1. Installing WordPress directly into the Angular application.
2. Installing WordPress outside the application, then integrating Angular via an API (Application Programming Interface).

Here we'll focus on the second method. After the headless WordPress website is installed outside the application, the next step is integrating the Angular application via API. To do this, you'll first need to install a REST API plugin to extract the JSON data.

Once that is done, you can install the Angular app. Here's a step-by-step on how to implement Angular to the front-end of your WordPress website:

1. Access the app.module.ts and import the module HttpClientModule.
2. After importing the necessary modules, declare the post variable and use it to retrieve data from the destination URL that was created on your static WordPress website.
3. Once the post variable has been declared, you can use it to display posts on a loop using the ul>li tags. This allows you to create features like videos, images, blogs, and text posts.

By using headless eCommerce solutions at the core of your platform, you can fully integrate WordPress and Angular, and create a user-generated content platform.

Benefit from PHP and Angular Resources

Angular is a platform for building front-end mobile and web apps that runs on the client side (the user's web browser). PHP, on the other hand, is a server-side or back-end language that is used to build web applications on the server. By combining these two technologies, you can create apps that have both front-end and back-end functionality. For example, WordPress, which is built with PHP, could be extended with Angular to create a more dynamic and interactive user experience.

This works because web applications have a front-end platform (what users see on the website) and a back-end development environment (what makes the website function as it does). PHP is used in the back-end environment to access the server resources, such as a MySQL database. Angular is used in the front end to structure the user interface, which is usually based on the consumption and rendering of data coming from the servers.

Traditionally, PHP takes care of the preprocessing of the PHP code and the rendering of an HTML page, and then sends it to the client browser. However, with Angular, the processing is now done inside the browser.

Connecting Angular to PHP

There are two ways to connect Angular (a front-end platform) to PHP (a back-end language).

The first method involves creating separate Angular and PHP apps. In this case, the PHP app must have a REST API that the Angular app can call to retrieve data. This approach allows you to build a single back-end that can be used by multiple mobile and web apps.

The second method involves using a single app that contains both Angular and PHP. In this case, the PHP app must be able to serve the Angular front-end, and the Angular app must be able to access PHP resources. This approach allows you to create a single app that has both front-end and back-end functionality.