Does Django Work With WordPress?
Django and WordPress can coexist in the same project, but they're fundamentally separate systems best kept decoupled—use them together via APIs rather than direct integration.
Quick Facts
How Django Works With WordPress
Django and WordPress serve different purposes: Django is a backend framework for building custom applications, while WordPress is a complete CMS. They don't integrate directly because they have separate databases, template engines, and request handling. The practical approach is treating WordPress as a content repository and Django as an API consumer or running them as completely independent services on the same domain via reverse proxies.
Most developers use the WordPress REST API to fetch content from Django applications, or vice versa—expose WordPress data via REST endpoints and consume it in Django templates or as JSON for SPAs. This decoupled architecture is actually preferable because it isolates concerns: WordPress handles editorial workflows and content management, while Django handles custom business logic, complex computations, or specialized features.
If you need deeper integration, you could run both on separate subdomains/ports and coordinate via APIs, or use Django exclusively and replace WordPress with a headless CMS. The key is recognizing they're tools for different jobs—don't force tight coupling when loose coupling via REST APIs works better.
Best Use Cases
Django fetching WordPress posts via REST API
pip install requests django-cors-headers# Django view consuming WordPress REST API
import requests
from django.shortcuts import render
from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page
@cache_page(60 * 5) # Cache for 5 minutes
def blog_posts(request):
try:
response = requests.get(
'https://wordpress-site.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts',
params={'per_page': 10, 'orderby': 'date'}
)
posts = response.json()
return render(request, 'blog/posts.html', {'posts': posts})
except requests.RequestException as e:
return render(request, 'blog/error.html', {'error': str(e)}, status=500)
# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
'corsheaders',
# ... other apps
]
MIDDLEWARE = [
'corsheaders.middleware.CorsMiddleware',
# ... other middleware
]
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS = [
'https://wordpress-site.com',
]Known Issues & Gotchas
Database conflicts and duplicate content if both systems try to manage the same data
Fix: Establish clear ownership: one system owns each data type. Use read-only REST API endpoints to prevent accidental overwrites.
User authentication across both systems requires custom middleware or OAuth integration
Fix: Implement a single sign-on layer (OAuth2 or JWT) or use WordPress as the auth provider for Django via REST API with token validation.
Performance degradation when Django constantly polls WordPress REST API during request cycles
Fix: Cache WordPress responses aggressively using Redis or Django's cache framework; use webhooks for real-time updates instead of polling.
WordPress plugins may conflict with Django if both try to handle the same URLs on a shared domain
Fix: Use separate subdomains (blog.example.com for WordPress, api.example.com for Django) or configure reverse proxy routing carefully.
Alternatives
- •Headless CMS (Contentful, Strapi) + Django: eliminates WordPress entirely, gives you API-first content management with Django backend
- •Django + Wagtail CMS: keeps everything in the Django ecosystem with a powerful, developer-friendly CMS built on Django
- •Next.js/React + Django REST Framework: use Django for APIs only and WordPress/headless CMS for content, frontend in modern JS
Resources
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