What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular website builder and content management system on the internet, powering more than 40% of all websites. It is a free and open-source software that anyone can use to create blogging platforms, business websites, online stores, and more. A domain name and a web hosting account are required to launch a WordPress website. There are numerous excellent WordPress hosting providers that provide 1-click WordPress installation and super simple setup, such as A2 Hosting’s  Managed WordPress service.

What is Webflow?

Webflow is a drag-and-drop website builder that allows you to create professional-looking, responsive websites without the need for coding. You have the option of starting from scratch or selecting from the built-in templates or compatible templates from other sources. Webflow is a hosted software and hosting service, and feature upgrades and all services are charged according to the subscription plan.

WordPress vs Webflow Snapshot

Before delving into the specific features of each, here’s a quick comparison of WordPress vs. Webflow:

WordPress Key Features

The following are WordPress’s important feature descriptions:

• Simple and responsive: WordPress enables you to quickly publish content for any type of website, including blogs, business websites, professional portfolios, and even community websites.
• Straightforward publishing tools: WordPress allows you to create, review, and publish pages or posts, as well as easily format and publish them with the click of a button.
• Design and template customization: WordPress not only comes with three default themes, but it also allows you to upload free or paid themes from various repositories.
• SEO friendly (search engines): WordPress is search engine optimized, and users can further optimize the site for SEO by using various SEO plugins.
• Extend with Plugins: The official plugin directory contains over 54000 plugins that allow users to customize their website without any technical knowledge.
• Massive WordPress Community: WordPress is an open-source content management system with a large supportive and active community to assist with any problems at any level.
• Mobile-friendly: WordPress allows you to optimize the size for mobile users by using appropriate plugins and themes.

WebFlow Key Features

Here is a description of Webflow key features to go along with the items listed in the comparison summary snapshot in the introduction section: 

• Webflow’s designer platform is powered by CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, allowing you to create a professional website using the visual designer without writing any code.
• Dynamic content authoring tools: Webflow comes with simple content publishing tools that allow users to create and publish content with the click of a button.
• Templates that can be customized: Webflow offers over 500 paid and free HTML5 responsive templates.
• SEO optimization: Webflow allows users to change page names, meta descriptions, and photo descriptions for SEO purposes. It generates sitemaps automatically for search engines to understand the structure of the new site, and it handles redirects, which is an important part of SEO.
• Plugins: Webflow includes plugins and integrations to extend the functionality of the business or personal website.
• Mobile-Friendly: In the Webflow editor, users can toggle between desktop and mobile views, allowing them to customize each page for different resolutions. A header used for a website version, for example, will not be suitable for a mobile preview; however, Webflow allows you to open the page in a mobile preview and replace the image and font to make the website mobile-friendly.

Conclusion

Obviously, in most cases, WordPress features are still preferred, but Webflow is a good alternative especially for web designers. Managed WordPress Hosting from A2 Hosting is built on Cloud Container Technology and optimized for WordPress sites. This optimized hosting environment allows you to deploy WordPress websites faster and with less configuration. 

A2 Managed WordPress Web Hosting account comes loaded with innovative features like:

• Auto WordPress installation and pre-configuration (based on best practices on over 100,000 WordPress sites)
• Easy-To-Use Staging – quickly and easily deploy a development copy of your site to test on
• A2 Optimized – performance caching on both server-side and on the WordPress application level
• Easy WordPress Backups – automated and provides daily backup protection for ultimate peace of mind
• Automatic WordPress core updates & patches – Stay focused on building your site. Our team of WordPress experts will ensure you have the best WordPress version and patches.
• Enhanced security both at the WordPress application side and server-side
• Free SSL certificate
• Developer-friendly features include WP-CLI, SSH, GIT, and more!

The post Webflow vs WordPress: What’s the Difference? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Running a corporate wiki site is a smart way to solve this information storage and organization problem. In general, a wiki is a collaboratively edited website that lets multiple users add to and modify it. Your company can easily use one to store all your content in a central place and consistently update it.

In this article, we’ll go into detail about what a wiki website is, how it works, and how your company can benefit from using one. Let’s get to it!

An Introduction to Wiki Websites

A wiki website is any type of website or software tool that enables collaborative editing by its users. In other words, if you can read it, you can also edit it. The most common example is Wikipedia:

This domain is simply a public encyclopedia that allows site visitors to add all sorts of information covering virtually every sphere of knowledge. Another example you may be familiar with is the infamous WikiLeaks. However, your business wiki will need to be a little different.

You can consider your business wiki website as a private Wikipedia that serves your company and its employees. Typically, it will be targeted at growing a knowledge base in a particular field.

Although wiki websites are open to collaboration, they normally have to be moderated. As a business, you can also choose to regulate which members of your company can contribute. You could make it accessible to all registered users. Or, you could limit it to members of a certain department or with a certain level of clearance.

Diplopedia, for example, is a United States government-run wiki website that allows all its users to add just about any information associated with international relations and diplomacy.

However, it’s run on an intranet open only to authorized government officials. There are lots of other examples to consider in order to understand how wikis work and how you can incorporate one into your business. However, let’s consider practical ways in which having one can benefit your company.

How Your Company Can Benefit from a Wiki Website (5 Key Ways)

The original implementation of a wiki website was done by Ward Cunningham (popularly known as the father of the wiki). Ward described the idea as a “composition system”, “discussion medium”, “repository”, and “tool for collaboration”. Although the form has changed over the years, its function has remained virtually the same. Here are some of the benefits you stand to enjoy using a wiki website for your company.

1. A Wiki Site Helps to Effectively Document and Organize All Your Information

To maximize efficiency, you must organize your information in a manner that makes it easily accessible and editable by your team. A wiki website can help you do that.

The ideal wiki website uses a clear hierarchical structure to make it easy for employees to find and apply useful information when necessary. If your business processes require a more flexible structure, you can customize the wiki website based on your unique needs as well.

For example, Airtable collaborates with Guru to deliver its users an integrated wiki service. This is not only useful for collaboration, but it also gathers information in a highly organized structure:

Furthermore, employees can still use the search feature to find what they’re looking for. This will significantly benefit your business in terms of efficiency as knowledge workers typically spend 19 percent of their time looking for the information they need to do their jobs.

Likewise, a wiki website is an ideal solution for documenting the history of your company. As every successful organization is bound to change all the time, a wiki presents an opportunity for every member to make note of this in a simplified way.

2. You Can Manage Internal Team Collaboration Better

If you’re looking to improve the efficiency of your collaboration, then you may want to consider using a wiki website. When working on projects, your team will find a workplace wiki really handy.

You can also use a wiki website to:

• Organize troubleshooting solutions to common problems.
• Document meeting proceedures or deadlines.
• Enhance new team member onboarding.

Also, most corporate wikis integrate seamlessly with a lot of document and project management tools you may already use. For example, Google Drive is an important platform wikis can integrate.

Other video tools and software development platforms such as Vimeo and GitHub are not left out either. In the end, what you have is a central all-in-one business solution.

3. Using a Wiki Drives Your Team Members to Learn and Produce More Results

A wiki website often provides an opportunity for your employees to take ownership of their learning curves. With the much-simplified system of finding information, your team members will generally feel more motivated not only to embark on their duties but also to seek to expand their expertise. This often arises from a desire to contribute to your company’s knowledge base.

When using a wiki, you can easily delegate research tasks to members of your team. The entire company can then benefit from their input. This inherently pushes your employees to improve their skills and offer more value to the organization.

By simplifying your workflow and making it easy to locate information, a wiki makes it possible for your employees to build on the previous work of other users, too. When they come across outdated information on the wiki, they can easily revise the content of your business website.

In general, wikis help to engage your team members more productively and increase their level of expertise. They can collect more information in a shorter period of time and deliver better results.

4. A Wiki Site Can Be Used for Content Marketing

When it comes to digital marketing, content authority is crucial. A collaborative wiki helps you to regularly put together enough information in one place to build credibility as an authority in your industry.

This will also impact your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) positively. Search rankings rely heavily on internal and external link building. You can use a wiki website to link to highly relevant content on your website. This way, your brand becomes even more visible to customers looking for information about your products or services.

Basecamp’s public handbook, which is hosted on GitHub, is an excellent example:

Slite is another wiki worthy of note:

It consists of three different sections aimed at providing information about the team, marketing strategy, and the product.

5. Running a Wiki Website is Cost-Effective

A study by Glassdoor puts the average US employer’s expenditure on hiring a new worker at $4,000. The entire process lasts approximately 24 days. However, as we’ve noted, a well-developed wiki website can significantly ease up these costs in productivity.

Plus, we also mentioned that a wiki can help employees find required information faster, boosting efficiency further. When you consider all the factors involved, it becomes clear that a wiki website makes perfect sense from a financial standpoint.

By simplifying your organizational processes and improving your staff expertise, a wiki website often has a direct impact on your company’s profitability. Since you’re now able to achieve better productivity within your team and also offer more value to the general public, wikis deliver an excellent Return on Investment (ROI).

Conclusion

A wiki website is all about gathering information, organizing it properly, and making continuous changes. If you want to better your team’s collaborative efforts and deliver more value, then you may want to consider creating one yourself.

For a quick recap, here are some of the practical ways your company can benefit from a wiki site:

1. A wiki site helps to effectively document and organize all your information.
2. You can manage internal team collaboration better.
3. Using a wiki drives your team members to learn and produce more results.
4. A wiki site can be used for content marketing.
5. Running a wiki website is cost-effective.

Are you thinking about launching a wiki website for your business? Check out our services and learn how A2 Hosting can help!

Featured Image Credit: Unsplash.

The post How Your Company Can Benefit from a Wiki Website appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Frontity is a free and open-source framework that helps you build WordPress applications using React JS. Although React development offers a lot of benefits, you would normally have to follow a complex setup process that includes bundling, server rendering, etc. Fortunately, Frontity eliminates all of these procedures, and gets you to the development stage in no time.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of building a web application with Frontity. Before that, let’s consider why Frontity is a great option for your WordPress project. Let’s get started!

What Frontity Is and Why It’s Great for Building Web Applications

Frontity is a framework that enables you to build a React-based front-end for a headless WordPress website. Once Frontity is set up, your WordPress website will serve its data via the REST API. Frontity will then consume this data, and render it in the web browser as a Single Page Application (SPA).

Instead of the visitor browsing from one page to the next, a SPA dynamically rewrites the same page with new data that it retrieves from the server. You can host Frontity on either a regular Node.js server or in a serverless environment.

Although it’s possible to build a headless website without using tools such as Frontity, this usually requires you to manage a list of tasks. These tasks include transpiling, routing, server rendering, retrieving data from WordPress, and much more.

While you could reduce the workload using a framework such as Next.js or Gatsby.js, these solutions aren’t designed specifically for WordPress. To use them with WordPress, you would need to perform a significant amount of configuration. You might also have to install some additional tools.

By contrast, Frontity was designed with WordPress firmly in mind. Every part of the Frontity framework has been simplified and optimized specifically for the platform. Frontity also includes everything you need to develop for WordPress, including React, TypeScript, CSS-in-JS and Babel. Since you don’t have to set up additional tooling, you’re free to concentrate on what really matters: building your website.

Frontity can also improve your website’s performance, resulting in fast loading times with no extra assets or round-trips required. It responds to requests with a fully-populated HTML file generated with React, which reduces the time required for the first contentful paint. Once React has loaded, Frontity’s router prefetches other routes and data automatically.

In other words, your visitors should never have to wait while navigating your site. Since page speed is a ranking factor for Google searches, using an optimized solution such as Frontity can also deliver a significant SEO boost.

Last but not least, Frontity is designed to be extensible, with its team already working on extensions for Yoast SEO, AdSense, SmartAds, and Google Analytics. These extensions aren’t currently available, but Frontity has created a GitHub page where the finished extensions will be posted. Frontity’s themes are also compatible with the React packages that are currently available via the Node Package Manager (NPM).

How to Build a Web Application Using Frontity (In 5 Steps)

To build a web application using Frontity, you’ll need a WordPress installation. It can be hosted on a web server or locally.

We’ll also be using Node.js to run Frontity commands. To see whether you already have Node.JS installed, you can open a Terminal on your computer and run the following command:

node -v

If the Terminal returns a version number, then Node.js is already installed. If not, you can install Node.js from the official site.

Step 1: Launch a New Frontity Project

The first step is creating a local Frontity project, and then connecting this project to your WordPress installation. To do this, open a Terminal and run the following command:

npx frontity create my-project

You’ll need to replace my-project with the name of your project. Frontity will then ask you to select either the Mars or the TwentyTwenty theme. If you’re new to Frontity, then it’s recommended that you select Mars.

Once you’ve made your selection, Frontity will clone your chosen theme, create all the necessary files, and install any required dependencies. You can also specify whether you want to receive Frontity updates via email.

After a few moments, you should see a Frontity project created message. Frontity has now created a directory on your local machine, with the project name you specified. By default, Frontity projects are stored in your users directory:

This directory contains the following important Frontity files and folders:

• Frontity.settings.js. This is where you’ll define your project’s settings and any packages it requires.
  Node_modules. This is where all of your dependencies are stored. You shouldn’t need to modify any of the files contained within this folder.
  Package.json. This is used to configure your Node.js project, and is also where you’ll store the dependencies required by your application.
  Packages. This folder contains all your local packages, including your theme.

Next, change directory (cd) so that the Terminal is pointing at the project’s root directory, for example:

cd /users/my-project

You can now start development by running the following command:

npx frontity dev

Once you run this command, a new page should open automatically in your default web browser. Initially, Frontity will connect to a test blog that displays demo content:

You can connect Frontity to your own WordPress website by editing the frontity.settings.js file inside your project directory.

You should be able to open this file using any text editor. The contents should look something like this:

const settings = {
  "name": "my-project",
  "state": {
    "frontity": {
      "url": "https://test.frontity.org",
      "title": "Test Frontity Blog",
       description": "WordPress installation for Frontity development"
    }
  },
  "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
         "menu": [
            [
              "Home",
              "/"
            ],
            [
              "Nature",
              "/category/nature/"
            ],
            [
              "Travel",
              "/category/travel/"
            ],
            [
              "Japan",
              "/tag/japan/"
            ],
            [
              "About Us",
              "/about-us/"
            ]
            ],
          "featured": {
            "showOnList": false,
            "showOnPost": false
          }
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "@frontity/wp-source",
      "state": {
        "source": {
          "api": "https://test.frontity.org/wp-json"
        }
      }
    },
    "@frontity/tiny-router",
    "@frontity/html2react"
  ]
};

In this file, find the api property. By default, this property is set to https://test.frontity.org/wp-json. You’ll need to change this to the address of your own website, with the wp-json extension. For example, if your website is https://example.com, then you should enter https://example.com/wp-json:

     "name": "@frontity/wp-source",
      "state": {
        "source": {
          "api": "https://example.com/wp-json"
        }
      }
    },

Save your changes, and refresh the Frontity tab in your web browser. This page should update to display content pulled directly from your own blog.

Step 2: Add Pages to Your App

Frontity is now connected to your website, but the menu still contains links to Frontity’s demo content (Nature, Travel, Japan, and About Us). If visitors click on any of these links, then they’ll encounter a 404 error:

You need to replace these placeholder pages with your own content. In your local project directory, open the frontity.settings.js file, and find the packages section. It should look something like this:

 "packages": [
     {
       "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
       "state": {
         "theme": {
           "menu": [
             [
               "Home",
               "/"
             ],
             [
               "Nature",
               "/category/nature/"
             ],
             [
               "Travel",
               "/category/travel/"
             ],
             [
               "Japan",
               "/tag/japan/"
             ],
             [
               "About Us",
               "/about-us/"
             ]
           ],

You can now replace these placeholders with your own pages. For example, if you wanted to link to your website’s Store page, located at https://example.com/store, then you’d use the following:

 "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
       "state": {
         "theme": {
           "menu": [
             [
               "Store",
                  "/store/"
            ],
....
....
….
            ]
          ],

If you wanted to link to your hat product, located at https://example.com/store/hat, then you’d add the following:

 "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
          "menu": [
            [
              "Hat",
                 "/store/hat/"
            ],
...
...
...
            ]
         ],

As an example, we’re going to add the following pages to the Frontity menu: Home, Store, About Us, and Contact Us:

  "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
          "menu": [
           [
             "Home",
              "/"
           ],
           [
              "Store",
              "/store/"
           ],
           [
              "About Us",
               "/about-us/"
           ],
           [
              "Contact Us",
              "/contact-us/"
           ]
           ],

You can now save these changes. Refresh your website, and the menu should update with links to all of your pages.

Step 3: Customize Your Theme

When you set up Frontity, you selected either the Mars or the TwentyTwenty theme. This theme controls your site’s appearance, but you can modify the default look by editing it at the code level.

By customizing the various files that make up your chosen theme, you can add new User Interface (UI) elements, remove elements, add padding and margins, and make countless other stylistic changes.

To make these customizations, you’ll need to edit the contents of your project’s packages/theme-name folder. For example, if you’re using the Mars theme, then the packages folder contains a mars-theme directory:

In this directory, you can change various onscreen elements. To illustrate the general process, we’ll be changing the color of our website’s title text using HTML.

In HTML, colors are defined using Red-Green-Blue (RGB) values, Hexadecimal (HEX) values, Hue-Saturation-Lightness (HSL) values, Red-Green-Blue-Alpha (RGBA) values, or Hue-Saturation-Lightness-and-Alpha (HSLA) values. You can quickly and easily generate a code using a color picker such as HTML Color Codes.

To make this change, navigate to packages/mars-theme/src/components. Open the header.js file in your text editor, and then find the following section:

const Container = styled.div`
  width: 848px;
  max-width: 100%;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  padding: 24px;
  color: #fff;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: space-around;
`;

The #fff attribute is the code for white:

You can change the color of this text by replacing color #fff with a different HTML color code. In the following snippet, we’re styling this text so that it appears black:

const Container = styled.div`
  width: 848px;
  max-width: 100%;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  padding: 24px;

//Change the following line//

  color: #000000;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: space-around;
`;

When we save our changes, the new color is immediately applied to the header text:

It’s well worth spending some time exploring the various theme files and folders, to see what changes you can make. With a few code-level tweaks, you can put a unique spin on any theme, and help your website stand out from the crowd.

Step 4: Add Extra Features to Your App

Disqus is a blog comment hosting service. WordPress may support comments out-of-the-box, but Disqus can provide some additional benefits, including social network integration, advanced administrative and moderation options, and native ads that you can place around your comments section:

Once you’ve installed and imported Disqus into your local project, you can add a related comments section to any part of your site. We’ll show you how to add one to every single post that appears across your website.

To start, you’ll need to install Disqus. You can do this by running a command in your Terminal:

npm install disqus-react

Next, you need to implement Disqus as a component. We’d recommend creating a standard Frontity component directory structure.

In the comments.js file, add the following:

import React from "react";
import { connect } from "frontity";
import Disqus from 'disqus-react';

const Comments = ({ state }) => {
    const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);
    const post = state.source[data.type][data.id];

    const disqusShortname = “blog-name”;

     const threadConfig = {
          url: `https://${disqusShortname}.com${state.router.link}`,
          identifier: post.id,
          title: post.title.rendered,
   };

    return (
      <Disqus.DiscussionEmbed shortname={disqusShortname} config={threadConfig} />
    )
}
export default connect(Comments);

Next, you’ll need to implement Disqus through namespaces. In your index.js file, add the following:

import Comment from "./comment";

export default {
    libraries: {
        comments: {
            Comment
         }
    }
};

Since we want comments to appear on all posts, we’ll need to open Frontity’s post.js file. If you’re using the Mars theme, this is located in packages/mars-theme/src/components.

Open this file for editing, and find the following section:

      {/* Render the content using the Html2React component so the HTML is processedby the processors we included in the libraries.html2react.processors array. */}
      <Content>
        <Html2React html={post.content.rendered} />
      </Content>
    </Container>
  ) : null;
};

You should update this section to reference the comments package you just created:

       {/* Render the content using the Html2React component so the HTML is processedby the processors we included in the libraries.html2react.processors array. */}
        <Content>
            <Html2React html={post.content.rendered} />
  <libraries.comments.Comments />
       </Content>
     </Container>
  ) : null;
};

Save your changes, and refresh your blog in the web browser. If you open any post and scroll to the bottom, it should now feature a Disqus comment section.

Step 5: Publish Your App

Once you’re happy with your Frontity web application, you can deploy it to production. To create a production-ready bundle, run the following command from the root of your project:

npx frontity build

This will create a build folder containing your React application and Frontity (Node.js) server. You’ll find this folder in your project’s root directory:

You can deploy this folder to any hosting that’s capable of serving a Node.js application. For example, you can use npx frontity serve to run your project like a standard Node.js application, or upload it to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and serverless service.

Frontity recommends Vercel as a serverless solution, although you could also use AWS Lambda, Netlify or Google Functions. To deploy your Frontity app using Vercel, you need to create a Vercel account. In your Terminal, run the following command:

npx vercel login

When prompted, enter your email address. Vercel will now send a Verification email to your account; open this email and give the Verify button a click.

On your computer, open your Frontity app’s root directory. Then create a vercel.json file containing the following:

{
  "version": 2,
  "builds": [
     {
       "src": "package.json",
       "use": "@frontity/now"
     }
  ]
}

Save this file, and run the following Terminal command:

npx vercel

After a few moments, the Terminal should ask whether you want to set up and deploy your project. To deploy, press the y key, followed by Enter .

You can now choose the scope that you want to deploy to, and whether you’re deploying to an existing project. If you deploy to a new project, then you can give that project a name. Note that Vercel only supports hyphens, lowercase letters, and numbers. You’ll also need to specify the local directory where your project is located.

Once you’ve entered this information, Vercel will assign your project a live URL, in the format https://example.vercel.app. Vercel also generates a project settings URL, in the format https://vercel.com/vercel-username/my-frontity-project/settings. This URL opens your project’s settings in the Vercel console.

Here, you can make various changes to your project, including assigning new domains to your deployment, and integrating Vercel with Git so that changes are pushed to your Git repositories automatically.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Frontity makes WordPress-React development easier. This framework helps you to create apps that are SEO-friendly, possess great designs, and perform well. By creating a web application using Frontity, you can reduce the workload and configuration typically required to create a headless WordPress website.

Here’s a quick recap of the steps involved in building a web application using Frontity:

1. Launch a new Frontity project.
2. Add pages to your app.
3. Customize your theme.
4. Add extra features to your app.
5. Publish your app.

Once you’re happy with your web application, you can host it in a serverless environment or opt for developer-friendly web hosting that’s optimized for Node.js!

Image credit: FeeLoona.

The post How to Build WordPress Apps With Frontity (In 5 Steps) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

In essence, React is a library that simplifies the process of building a User Interface (UI) by making use of ‘components.’ React relies mainly on the JavaScript language and has grown to become one of the most popular solutions for front-end web development.

In this article, we’ll examine what React is, its origins, and how it compares with similar options in the web development ecosystem.

An Introduction to the React Framework (And Why You Need It)

JavaScript is one of the major scripting languages used as a core technology in web development. Though HTML and CSS are also major stakeholders, JavaScript has risen to the very top of the ranks, given that it helps to create and control dynamic web content. In fact, a Web Technology Surveys (Web3Techs) report reveals that a whopping 95% of all websites use JavaScript.

On a much wider scale, Statista also found out that JavaScript is the most prevalent programming language worldwide as of early 2020. About 68% of software developers use it.

However, notwithstanding its wide acceptance and popularity, JavaScript doesn’t include everything a developer needs. As such, we’ve seen the recent rise in various front-end frameworks such as Angular and Vue.js.

In simple terms, the React framework is a Javascript library developers use to build user interfaces for single-page web and mobile applications. The major aim of developing React was to improve JavaScript’s User Interface (UI) development. Facebook deployed it for the first time on its News Feed in 2011 and later on Instagram in 2012.

At the core of every React app are components. A React component is a self-contained module that you can use to render a UI output. A typical component can include several other components in its output. In other words, React apps are created by writing components that correspond to different interface elements. An application structure is then defined by organizing the components within other higher-level components.

Why The React Framework Is So Popular

The major advantage React introduced over its predecessors was the introduction of a virtual Document Object Model (DOM). Though not particular to React, a virtual DOM lets the developer implement changes to the document’s data outside the browser. In other words, you can manipulate the document on a DOM built and run entirely in local memory.

Once you’re done with your changes, React intelligently inputs changes from the virtual DOM to the actual browser’s DOM. This in theory offers much better performance.

For a clearer picture, let’s list some reasons why millions of developers around the world choose React.

• React is simple and easy to learn. React’s approach of breaking UI elements down into components makes it attractive to many new developers. React uses a well-defined application structure and a special syntax called JavaScript XML (JSX). JSX makes it possible for developers to mix HTML with JavaScript which makes it much easier to use. In other words, anyone with a basic knowledge of programming can easily learn React unlike ‘domain-specific languages’ such as Angular and Ember.
• React performs better. Over time, React has become very famous for its speed and performance. Thanks to its support for a virtual DOM, performance is significantly better and the applications’ workload is also well-optimized. Likewise, data flows only in one direction in React letting you control the project (and test components) easily.
• There’s a great supportive community. Thanks to the fact that it is open-source and widely adopted, React is backed by a great community. Apart from the availability of React Developer Tools, you can easily find help from other developers if you run into trouble as a newbie.
• React is great for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Unlike many other JavaScript frameworks, React works very well with SEO. Therefore, your applications will be more accessible to search engines.

However, React would be nothing without its connectivity to the wider development community. Let’s find out more about how React achieves this.

How React Fits into the Web Development Ecosystem

Though originally launched for use with Facebook, React is now enjoying a great rate of adoption across several industries. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as the majority of modern apps rely on reliable UI elements. Many also have a lot of dynamic components.

All these factors make a very good case for the incorporation of React. Let’s quickly take a look at some of the typical projects where you may employ React:

• Social networks. Other social apps such as Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and more now depend on React. With the help of Server-Side Rendering (SSR), social sharing and SEO takes on a completely new dynamic. React uses SSR to retrieve relevant information such as the title and author when you’re sharing a post. Being able to have a proper preview is an effective way of rendering your web app. React also offers a lot of benefits when it comes to SEO – a plus for virtually any industry.
• Ecommerce and retail. The reusability of React components makes it an ideal fit for web apps based in e-commerce. Once a developer builds a component on your site, they can reuse the component on a site-wide basis. This saves both time and money on your project. This also positively impacts code maintenance, as the reusability of components helps to avoid code duplicity.
• Cross-platform mobile apps. If you want to build mobile apps for use across different platforms such as Android and iOS, React Native offers a great opportunity. Mobile apps using React Native behave like any other native iOS or Android app. Upgrading a React-based web app to the mobile version is also very easy.

There are several other project types where the adoption of React has proven ideal. Sharing economy apps (Airbnb, Uber, Lyft), video platforms (Netflix), and SaaS tools (Zapier) all incorporate React.

Of course, WordPress has also adopted React through other frameworks such as Frontity, and Matt Mullenweg’s initial insistence to “Learn JavaScript deeply” should also include a React-based approach to creating WordPress products too.

Conclusion

If you’re looking forward to working as a front-end web developer, learning React is definitely a great idea. There are a lot of benefits to using the library, and it enjoys immense popularity only a few years after its release.

React’s dependence on JavaScript and the idea behind components make it very easy to adapt. There are also other features like the virtual Document Object Model (DOM) and renderers that make React deliver great runtime performance.

Image credit: React Plus.

The post React Framework: A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on The A2 Posting.