Overview

Learn about Pantheon's decoupled architecture with Front-End Sites.

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Front-End Sites on Pantheon allow you to use decoupled architecture to separate your frontend and backend into distinct entities.

 Early Access

Pantheon Front-End Sites are available for Early Access participants. Features for Pantheon Front-End Sites are in active development. Pantheon's development team is rolling out new functionality often while this product is in Early Access. Enrollment is open for our Front-End Sites Early Access program. Please review Pantheon's Software Evaluation Licensing Terms for more information about access to our software.

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.

 Not what you're looking for?

Check out the Front-End Sites landing page to access all documentation for Front-End Sites.

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.

Decoupled Terminology

More Resources