WP Engine’s platform for headless WordPress, Atlas, has seen incredible growth over the past year thanks to a complete suite of products supported by many internal teams.
Throughout 2022, these teams and products led the way as WP Engine made great strides in the headless WordPress space.
I am happy to share some of the results with you. Below are some of the major Atlas platform releases and improvements from last year. Faust.js, WPGraphQLmore.
Bonus: We’ll also give you a sneak peek at what we hope to build in 2023! But first, let’s take a closer look at the improvements to the Atlas platform.
Getting started with Atlas is easy
Since its launch in 2020, the Atlas platform and its growing ecosystem have taken aim at the hurdles of headless development, making headless building experiences more accessible to veteran developers as well as those new to headless. Easy to use and streamlined.
2022 was no exception. Our team focused on updates and improvements that make it easier than ever to experiment and create headless WordPress projects.
Atlas Sandbox Account
One of the biggest releases of 2022 was the addition of sandboxes (Atlas trial accounts). It provides developers with a free, feature-filled environment where they can learn more about headless technologies and start building right away.
We are excited to provide our customers and tech enthusiasts with a safe place to start new projects.With Atlas Sandbox accounts, WP Engine has expanded its Atlas plans to companies of all sizes in 2022.
Atlas blueprint
At DE{CODE} 2022 we released Atlas Blueprints. This is a pre-configured, easy-to-install environment that provides a starting point for Atlas users to learn and build headless tech stacks.
![Atlas Blueprint Dashboard](https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/blueprint-dash-1024x576.png)
Blueprints help developers speed up learning and save time spent reading documentation, installing tech stacks, and learning how to assemble a headless site from scratch.
Instead, use Atlas Blueprints to launch a templated headless site in minutes and focus on building your next headless project.
Atlas platform is more intuitive and easier to use
For 2022, our team has enhanced the core Atlas platform and performed the following punch list of updates, additions and optimizations. All of these make Atlas easy to use and operate.
- Domain level redirect Added to User Portal. Atlas users no longer need to manage domain-level redirects with a DNS host or custom code.
- runtime log Real-time build logs have been added to the user portal for easy access to this information.
- Rebuild and Clean Rebuild Webhooks Added to User Portal. Unlike a “normal” rebuild, a “clean rebuild” clears all previously cached folders and pulls the latest commits from the branch before rebuilding the environment. A user can now generate a webhook for her that can initiate a clean rebuild.
- Improved Github integration Features include branch deletion, repo renaming, subdirectory support, and more.
- password protection Allowed to provide an additional layer of security
- Cancel build function Added. Instead of waiting for the build to complete or timeout, the user can now cancel the build and queue an additional build (with a status indicator) in the user’s portal!)
- Ability to rollback quickly A previous successful build (if there are broken images, errors, etc.).
- portfolio blueprint and new BigCommerce blueprint Added in 2022.
- Supports monorepo. The Atlas build system now supports the ability to select Github subdirectories when selecting a repository. This allows your build to include multiple JavaScript apps in a single repository, and JavaScript apps in subfolders of your WordPress repository.
- Atlas debug mode enabledwhich allows developers to troubleshoot better (and faster).
- Added domain revalidation buttona domain status light was added to the user portal to make it easier to update and revalidate DNS records.
- Direct upload of .zip via API now availableDevelopers can upload code directly to Atlas using their WP Engine API credentials.
![](https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/image-2-740x1024.png)
Preview environment for pull requests
Another Atlas improvement that makes your Atlas workflow easier is the ability to dynamically create new Atlas environments to test changes from GitHub pull requests. No configuration steps are required in the User Portal.
With this feature turned on, whenever a pull request is opened against the branch used as the source branch for the Atlas environment, a preview environment will be created based on the branch being compared to the source branch. Closing or merging a pull request shuts down the environment.
Faust.js is even more WordPress friendly
Faust.js is an open source framework backed by WP Engine and built on top of Next.js and React. Faust is a complete library that reduces the development time required for headless WordPress sites while providing all the functionality of WordPress to your front-end application.
In 2022, we focused on improving Faust.js, reimagining what a headless WordPress library can and should be. With WordPress developers in mind, we’ve rebuilt from the ground up with the goal of making Faust.js the right library for all types of headless WordPress sites.
Reintroduction of Faust.js
Faust.js is back in 2022. This is thanks to great feedback from our customers that the WordPress focused JavaScript framework is influential in enabling primarily WordPress developers.
Faust.js Makes Headless Development Easy for WordPress Developers
Faust.js introduced the WordPress template hierarchy to headless development, allowing users to control headless templates as easily as traditional WordPress themes. This greatly speeds up integration with WordPress content management, saving your team time and energy.
Faust.js has made the ideal headless platform for agencies and businesses
Faust.js also introduces two new features for headless development. apollo client and Faust.js plugin Combined, this makes Atlas an ideal platform for sites of all sizes, as developers can build exactly what they need for the full cycle of headless applications.
![](https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/faust-settings-1024x785.png)
WPGraphQL is smarter and faster!
The best GraphQL API for WordPress just got better in 2022. WPGraphQL is a free and open source WordPress plugin that provides an extensible GraphQL schema and API for any WordPress site.
Already widely used for building rich JavaScript applications using frameworks such as Next.js, Gatsby, viewand svelte (And it plays a key role in the larger Atlas ecosystem), the improvements to WPGraphQL over the past year will undoubtedly facilitate even more use cases.
smart cache
One of the most significant updates to WPGraphQL in 2022 was the release of SmartCache, a WPGraphQL plugin that can cache GraphQL requests from WordPress.
Once these requests are cached, they no longer hit the WordPress servers and instead pass through the WPGraphQL SmartCache. This can improve performance while using fewer resources. This plugin is designed to work in the network caching layer of your WordPress hosting platform.
New custom post types and taxonomy registration options
WPGraphQL also makes it easy to: Expose custom post types and taxonomies to GraphQL schemasAs of October 2022, WPGraphQL will provide new options for how post types and taxonomies are added to the WPGraphQL schema.
This allows developers to use WPGraphQL in many (easier) ways with less code. For example, with this update, Better compatibility between tools like WooCommerce and WPGraphQL.
Headless Project Search Unlocked
Atlas Search beta release
Headless WordPress sites that use the native REST API or WPGraphQL to perform searches without other performance optimizations suffer from unexpected search results, the inability to search multiple words at once, and lack of support for custom data. can occur.
Atlas Search was released to change that, providing a customized search solution for headless WordPress with greater functionality and customizability than the default WordPress search.
The Atlas Search beta was free to all Atlas customers in Spring 2022 as part of our beta program, but stay tuned for updates on the general availability of Atlas Search.
Atlas improves content performance
Headless architectures not only offer new experiences for website builders and content creators, they can also dramatically improve the performance of websites and how content is delivered.
Android Authority, the largest independent publication dedicated to the Android OS, has improved SEO and 50 million monthly readers, including a 6x increase in page speed after adopting a headless architecture with a WordPress backend. Dramatically improved your browsing experience.
Georgian Collegeis a college of applied arts and technology based in Ontario, Canada whose website jumped from #23 to #2 in search results after converting to a headless build using Atlas.
Other Atlas users, from high-traffic digital publishers to enterprise consumer brands, will leverage the Atlas platform and ecosystem in 2022 to more effectively distribute content across more channels and digital touchpoints, and internal It provided speed and accuracy for both users and external users.
“Headless adoption has been on the rise for some time, but it continues to grow, and as more business leaders realize how this approach can help them meet their digital demands, more We can see our customers benefiting from our headless architecture,” said Jason Konen, Director of Product Management at WP Engine.
“Atlas is performing better with content. It’s a dead end,” he added. “If content creation is at the heart of your business, building your content on WordPress and using the front-end framework that developers love is a game changer. But don’t take my word for it. Try it for free with your Atlas Sandbox account and experience the headless difference first hand.”
Towards 2023
We are excited to double down on our commitment to improving Atlas next year and announce several new tools and features at our virtual DE{CODE} conference for developers.
You don’t want to miss out on the excitement, so book your place for free now! You can register here.
We will continue to share some of the projects we are investigating for 2023, such as improving the CI/CD experience, updating the new search functionality, and integrating with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). , continuous performance optimization.
What else would you like us to build? Let us know in the comments!