A headless website with the Jamstack architecture development

A headless website with the Jamstack architecture development

Headless Jamstack projects usually consist of three parts or layers: Javascript, API, and Markup. 

API Service Setup

Usually, we start projects by building an API service that is secure and scalable. We use Strapi, Netlify CMS, or WordPress API as the API provider.

To decide what service to use, we operate the following criteria:

  • what databases does the service support: SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL,  MariaDB, etc.; 
  • does it have rich Rest API capabilities as well as GraphQL query language  support;
  • does it cover authorization and authentication; 
  • does it allow adding custom functionality in the code. 

Frontend Development 

When the API is ready, the next step is choosing a framework for the Markup part in the Jamstack. At this point, we pay attention to whether the app needs to be optimized for search engines and whether it is dynamic.

The following chart will help better understand how the main framework is selected. 

Then depending on the project’s needs, we develop additional functionality like: 

  • Project Search features using Algolia or Elasticsearch 
  • Shopping and product managing features using Shopify
  • Payments with Stripe 

Finally, we deploy the project on the services like Netlify, Vercel, AWS, or similar.

Team composition and timeframe

Usually, such a project team consists of 1-2 frontend developers, 1 QA, 1 BA, or FA. Depending on whether UI/UX designs are needed before the development, UI/UX designers could join a team. Also, we will need a content manager, which could be from Softblues or the client’s side.

Commonly, such a project takes 1 to 3 months, depending on the number of features and sections with unique design.