An Incremental Static Regeneration Blog Example Using Next.js and WordPress

This example showcases Next.js's Incremental Static Regeneration feature using WordPress as the data source.

Demo

https://next-blog-wordpress.vercel.app

Deploy your own

Once you have access to the environment variables you'll need, deploy the example using Vercel:

Related examples

How to use

Execute create-next-app with npm, Yarn, or pnpm to bootstrap the example:

npx create-next-app --example cms-wordpress cms-wordpress-app

yarn create next-app --example cms-wordpress cms-wordpress-app

pnpm create next-app --example cms-wordpress cms-wordpress-app

Configuration

Step 1. Prepare your WordPress site

First, you need a WordPress site. There are many solutions for WordPress hosting, such as WP Engine and WordPress.com.

Once the site is ready, you'll need to install the WPGraphQL plugin. It will add GraphQL API to your WordPress site, which we'll use to query the posts. Follow these steps to install it:

Download the WPGraphQL repo as a ZIP archive.
Inside your WordPress admin, go to Plugins and then click Add New.

Click the Upload Plugin button at the top of the page and upload the WPGraphQL plugin.

Once the plugin has been added, activate it from either the Activate Plugin button displayed after uploading or from the Plugins page.

GraphiQL

The WPGraphQL plugin also gives you access to a GraphQL IDE directly from your WordPress Admin, allowing you to inspect and play around with the GraphQL API.

Step 2. Populate Content

Inside your WordPress admin, go to Posts and start adding new posts:

We recommend creating at least 2 posts
Use dummy data for the content
Pick an author from your WordPress users
Add a Featured Image. You can download one from Unsplash
Fill the Excerpt field

When you’re done, make sure to Publish the posts.

Note: Only published posts and public fields will be rendered by the app unless Preview Mode is enabled.

Step 3. Set up environment variables

Copy the .env.local.example file in this directory to .env.local (which will be ignored by Git):

cp .env.local.example .env.local

Then open .env.local and set WORDPRESS_API_URL to be the URL to your GraphQL endpoint in WordPress. For example: https://myapp.wpengine.com/graphql.

Your .env.local file should look like this:

WORDPRESS_API_URL=...

# Only required if you want to enable preview mode
# WORDPRESS_AUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN=
# WORDPRESS_PREVIEW_SECRET=

Step 4. Run Next.js in development mode

npm install
npm run dev

# or

yarn install
yarn dev

Your blog should be up and running on http://localhost:3000! If it doesn't work, post on GitHub discussions.

Step 5. Add authentication for Preview Mode (Optional)

This step is optional. By default, the blog will work with public posts from your WordPress site. Private content such as unpublished posts and private fields cannot be retrieved. To have access to unpublished posts you'll need to set up authentication.

To add authentication to WPGraphQL, first you need to add the WPGraphQL JWT plugin to your WordPress Admin following the same process you used to add the WPGraphQL plugin.

Adding the WPGraphQL JWT plugin will disable your GraphQL API until you add a JWT secret (GitHub issue).

Once that's done, you'll need to access the WordPress filesystem to add the secret required to validate JWT tokens. We recommend using SFTP — the instructions vary depending on your hosting provider. For example:

Once you have SFTP access, open wp-config.php and add a secret for your JWT:

define( 'GRAPHQL_JWT_AUTH_SECRET_KEY', 'YOUR_STRONG_SECRET' );

You can read more about this in the documentation for WPGraphQL JWT Authentication.

Now, you need to get a refresh token to make authenticated requests with GraphQL. Make the following GraphQL mutation to your WordPress site from the GraphQL IDE (See notes about WPGraphiQL from earlier). Replace your_username with the username of a user with the Administrator role, and your_password with the user's password.

mutation Login {
  login(
    input: {
      clientMutationId: "uniqueId"
      password: "your_password"
      username: "your_username"
    }
  ) {
    refreshToken
  }
}

Copy the refreshToken returned by the mutation, then open .env.local, and make the following changes:

Uncomment WORDPRESS_AUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN and set it to be the refreshToken you just received.
Uncomment WORDPRESS_PREVIEW_SECRET and set it to be any random string (ideally URL friendly).

Your .env.local file should look like this:

WORDPRESS_API_URL=...

# Only required if you want to enable preview mode
WORDPRESS_AUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN=...
WORDPRESS_PREVIEW_SECRET=...

Important: Restart your Next.js server to update the environment variables.

Step 6. Try preview mode

On your WordPress admin, create a new post like before, but do not publish it.

Now, if you go to http://localhost:3000, you won’t see the post. However, if you enable Preview Mode, you'll be able to see the change (Documentation).

To enable Preview Mode, go to this URL:

http://localhost:3000/api/preview?secret=<secret>&id=<id>

<secret> should be the string you entered for WORDPRESS_PREVIEW_SECRET.
<id> should be the post's databaseId field, which is the integer that you usually see in the URL (?post=18 → 18).
Alternatively, you can use <slug> instead of <id>. <slug> is generated based on the title.

You should now be able to see this post. To exit Preview Mode, you can click on Click here to exit preview mode at the top.

Step 7. Deploy on Vercel

You can deploy this app to the cloud with Vercel (Documentation).

Deploy Your Local Project

To deploy your local project to Vercel, push it to GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket and import to Vercel.

Important: When you import your project on Vercel, make sure to click on Environment Variables and set them to match your .env.local file.

Deploy from Our Template

Alternatively, you can deploy using our template by clicking on the Deploy button below.

smtkuo/wp-next-js