Beyond Posts & Pages: Managing External Data in WordPress
WordPress is often thought of as a system for managing posts, pages, and content stored within WordPress itself. But modern plugins and applications increasingly need to work with data that lives somewhere else — in SaaS platforms, CRMs, ERPs, or other external APIs.
In this talk, we’ll explore how React-powered WordPress interfaces can work with external data in a cleaner, more maintainable way. Using a real-world open-source project built to connect WordPress components with Frappe resources, we’ll look at how a shared data store can handle fetching, loading states, errors, updates, and reusable state across components.
Rather than focusing on Frappe itself, the session uses it as a practical example to demonstrate a broader pattern that can be applied to many external APIs and services.
Attendees will come away with a better understanding of how WordPress can act as an application platform, how React components can interact with data beyond WordPress, and how thoughtful data architecture can make custom plugins and applications simpler to build and maintain.
Key takeaways
- Understand how WordPress can work with external data.
- Learn a cleaner pattern for managing external APIs in React-powered WordPress interfaces.
- See how the approach applies to CRMs, ERPs, SaaS platforms, and other services.
- Explore how WordPress can function as an application interface, not just a CMS.