For years, WordPress has been known as the blogging tool. You install a theme, pick a plugin or two, and you’re ready to publish posts. But in the latest years, most of us are building apps, sites, and platforms that need more than a classic theme. that's why many projects today don’t use it the old way. Instead of letting WordPress render the whole site, people use it only to manage content and then build the frontend with React, Next.js, Nuxt, or even mobile apps. That’s what we call “headless”.
To make it simple, the problem is: normal WordPress themes are full of templates, CSS, and frontend logic you don’t need in a headless setup. That’s where technway/graphql-starter comes in. It’s a small starter theme that basically turns WordPress into a GraphQL API and nothing more.
What technway/graphql-starter gives you
The theme removes all the usual frontend rendering and focuses on exposing your content through WPGraphQL. You can define custom post types and custom fields, and they’ll show up automatically in the schema. There are also a few handy extras like mutations for adding comments or liking a post.
Everything is managed in a single config file. If you want features like pagination info or social share links, you just enable them there. If you don’t, you leave them off. It feels lightweight and easy to adjust.
On top of that, the repo comes with some ready-made GraphQL queries and mutations. That’s nice because you can test right away without writing queries from scratch.
How it fits?
As mentioned in the beginning, WordPress runs in the background as your CMS, and your app talks to it over /graphql. Editors can still log in to WordPress and manage posts, but your frontend decides how to display them.
It’s a good fit if you want WordPress only as a backend and prefer GraphQL over REST. The setup is minimal, so you can plug it into your stack without spending hours cleaning up unused theme code.
Who should try it?
This starter makes sense if you’re building with modern frameworks and you don’t need WordPress to render HTML. If you like GraphQL’s way of querying for just the data you need, it saves you from wiring everything up yourself.
It’s not for you if you want a traditional WordPress site with templates and plugins that depend on themes. It’s really "API-first".
Getting started
It's better to check the official docs of the theme, here are quick links:
Final thoughts
Of course, it’s not perfect yet. Out of the box, the theme doesn’t handle authentication, permissions, or more advanced features you might need in a production project. You’ll have to add those pieces yourself. But that’s also the point: "it’s a starter theme". It gives you the basics of a headless GraphQL setup, and then it’s up to you to extend it depending on your needs :)
As long as you go in with those considerations in mind, technway/graphql-starter can be a very solid foundation for your next headless WordPress project.
If you find the project useful, consider giving it a ⭐ on GitHub. Stars help us see that people actually use and appreciate the work, and they also make the project easier for others to discover :)
