Six things you need to know about moving WordPress to JavaScript.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, WordPress announced that they are currently working on a secret project called “Calypso”, which will be written entirely in JavaScript. And we were all just stunned by this news! Does WordPress seriously ruin PHP support for JavaScript?

1. WordPress - not (only) WP-Admin

At its core, WordPress is a content management system, or CMS. And like any other CMS, it contains the admin side, designed for creating and editing content, and the display side, which is responsible for rendering the website. Both of these parts can be connected / connected in various ways. It is common for WordPress that content editing side (also known as “WP-Admin”) stores content in MySQL databases, and website / blog side creates pages by filling templates with this content.

2. WP-Admin is closely related to WordPress

Direct connection used by WP-Admin requires special access to the database. This means that WP-Admin should be installed parallel to the WordPress page itself. It also limits WP-Admin in site management.
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3. Calypso is a new admin tool.

Calypso is a fundamental rethinking of what the admin side of WordPress should be. Instead of directly connecting to the MySQL database, Calypso manages content via the Internet using the REST API. This difference allows Calypso to be installed anywhere and connect to any WordPress site, or even to several at the same time. (With correctly entered login and password, naturally.)

4. Calypso for discussions

Most of WordPress.com’s experience is inherited by third-party developers. And this means that Calypso will be met with widespread discussions of the masses. This is a huge step from WP-Admin, where the focus was on your content!

5. PHP based WordPress is not going anywhere

Be that as it may, Calypso can do little without the WordPress engine. If you open the application (or download the source code and run it ), you will see a nice page that asks you to log in to the WordPress site. This is because Calypso is not a CMS. This is an administrator tool that can negotiate with any CMS using the REST API. But now, only one good old (PHP-based) WordPress will understand this language.

6. No way WP-Admin

In its current form, Calypso is an alternative to WP-Admin, not a replacement. Support for third-party plug-ins is likely to be a big stumbling block. Although you can enable / disable and update plugins using Calypso, many plugins will extend their existence on WP-Admin.

Conclusion

Calypso is a really exciting project with huge potential.
For WordPress CMS, Calypso can remain forever only an alternative interface. But perhaps we will witness how other CMS will learn to work with Calypso. We can even see a brand new, Calypso-compatible CMS that will be written entirely in JavaScript. Maybe even from Automattic (WordPress.com Owners Campaign). And this news will shake the whole world of web development!

* This article is not an exact translation and has deviations from the original in some places (for translator's reasons).