Overview
Learn about Pantheon's decoupled architecture with Front-End Sites.
This documentation is considered deprecated. If you use Front-End Sites today, we encourage you to migrate.
Front-End Sites on Pantheon allow you to use decoupled architecture to separate your frontend and backend into distinct entities.
What is a Decoupled Site?
Decoupled sites separate the frontend and backend. This allows developers to separate backend functionality and databases from the frontend Markup and JavaScript content.
A traditional content management system (CMS) like Drupal or WordPress is hosted and served with the website every time a request for a page is made. A traditional CMS bundles the backend and frontend into a single application.
Decoupling is the process of separating the content system or services. By decoupling the services needed to operate a site, each component can be worked on independently, minimizing site interruptions and failures, and providing a more efficient and smoother WebOps experience.
Decoupled Architecture is a site architecture that combines the speed and agility of static sites with the editing ease of standard-model content management systems. Web teams can use tools and frameworks tailored to their areas of expertise. For example, frontend developers can use modern JavaScript-centric frameworks and libraries rather than the theming systems of older, monolithic systems like WordPress and Drupal.
What is a Front-End Site?
Pantheon Front-End Sites provide users with tools that improve the experience of building a decoupled frontend that sources data from a CMS backend.
Front-End Sites allows a CMS site to be linked to a single site, multiple sites, or you can link directly to a frontend application without a CMS.
You can connect your Front-End Site to your Git repository and choose from select CMS backends and JavaScript frontends as a starting point:
- WordPress and Gatsby
- WordPress and Next.js
- Drupal and Next.js
- Direct import with no CMS
You can also start with a clean set up and connect your site account to an existing Git repository.
Front-End Sites Benefits
Pantheon's Front-End Sites:
- Optimizes the frontend solution for multiple sites.
- Manages frontend scalability independently.
- Makes your code easier to understand and maintain.
- Allows you to customize your tool selection at each layer of the system, which can't be done with most monolithic platforms.
- Improves testability and reliability.