Beyond WordPress
Unyson+ is a WordPress product today. This section looks at what lies past it: how a modern fast site is put together with tools like Astro and Sanity, how a WordPress developer can learn them, and how Unyson+ could reach those platforms.
:::caution Exploratory Nothing in the roadmap is built yet, and none of it is a promise. The learning guides work today. For what already works, see Headless WordPress. :::
In this section
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Learn Astro | Astro for WordPress developers, with each WordPress idea mapped to its Astro equivalent |
| Learn Sanity | What Sanity is, how its parts work, and how to connect it to Astro |
| Other backends | The alternatives to Sanity, and which suit Unyson+ |
| Roadmap | The phased plan for taking Unyson+ beyond WordPress |
The pieces of a modern stack
WordPress does everything in one package: admin, database, templates and page output. A modern stack splits those jobs between separate tools.
| Piece | Its job | Needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Astro | Builds the website that visitors see | Yes, or another front-end framework |
| Sanity | Stores the content and gives editors an admin | Yes, or another backend, including headless WordPress |
| Unyson+ (ported) | The visual page builder, design system, presets and animations | This is what the stack lacks today |
| React | Interactive parts of a site, and the Sanity admin | Optional on the website; Sanity Studio is built with it |
You do not need React, Astro and Sanity as three equal parts. The stack is Astro, a content backend and Unyson+. React appears mainly in the editor.
Editor (Sanity Studio with a Unyson+ builder plugin)
| saves the page as JSON
Content backend (Sanity, Payload, headless WordPress...)
| read at build time
Astro with Unyson+ components
|
Fast static site: HTML and CSS, with little JavaScript
Is Astro the same as React?
No. React is a library for interactive interfaces that run in the browser. Astro is a framework for whole websites that sends no JavaScript to the browser by default. Astro can include React components where a page needs interactivity, but you do not need React to start. For a WordPress developer, Astro is the gentler of the two, because it works much like PHP templates.
Why this matters for Unyson+
Sites built on Astro and a headless CMS are fast, but page building there usually means choosing from a fixed list of sections that a developer defined. There is rarely a full visual builder with design controls, presets and motion. That gap is what Unyson+ already fills on WordPress.