For BeerNC, Cardinal Media used WordPress for content management but served content and user data over a custom Express App. This provided a content management experience the client was comfortable with and the security and control of Express for the app’s internal-facing API.

Takeaways:

Using Express and an ORM can be better for some use-cases than the baked-in WP-API features.
Using WP-API methods and hooks can be used to create webhooks to keep an external API in sync with WordPress content, while giving content creators the ease-of-use that WordPress offers.
Shortcodes can be integrated into a front-end framework – we used Ionic2 to build BeerNC, but the methodology should be similar for most front-end frameworks.

Presentation Slides »