Frontity has launched a partnership program to support the maintenance of its open source framework for building React-based WordPress sites. 10up, a large agency that provides headless solutions to enterprise customers, is the first partner to join in support of the project.
“Since we launched Frontity Framework last year, dozens of WordPress publishers have asked our team about consulting services and for help on their migration to Frontity,” Frontity communications director Reyes Martínez said. “It was great to see an increasing interest in using Frontity at an enterprise-level but, unfortunately, we didn’t have an efficient way to help them all and fulfill the custom requirements these projects usually need.”
This partnership allows Frontity to funnel requests for consulting to 10up and other future agency partners. Reyes said the partnership does not have a monetary aspect but rather 10up is supporting the project by maintaining and extending the framework through contributions.
Prior to this arrangement, the agency had already contributed to the core framework, most notably by developing the Link Component and Auto-Prefetching features. 10up also created the ElasticPress package, which improves search for sites using Elasticsearch.
“Frontity provides an easy to use package management interface that enables us to quickly extend the platform — similar to how plugins work in the WordPress ecosystem,” 10up VP of Engineering Taylor Lovett said, explaining why the company formalized a partnership with the framework’s creators. “It includes features that typically require custom engineering, such as Google Analytics integration, routing, and integration with plugins (like SEO tools).”
Earlier this year Frontity raised €1M in funding in a round led by K Fund, with Automattic covering 22%. This funding keeps the maintainers free to focus on the open source project. Frontity recently ranked #9 on Runa Capital’s Open Source Startup (ROSS) Index, which ranked the top 20 startups by Github star growth for Q3 2020.
The project’s partnership program is an interesting and somewhat uncommon approach to sustaining the framework’s growth. It redirects a steady stream of leads for custom work to partners, helping potential users find expertise, while ensuring the project is well maintained. As the WordPress ecosystem demonstrates increasing interest in building React-powered websites, Frontity is turning the growing demand for custom work into an opportunity to bolster the open source project and ensure the framework’s future.
“Some companies are aware of the advantages of a decoupled React front-end and contact us because they are interesting in using Frontity, but don’t have the team or the internal resources to build or migrate a project from scratch,” Reyes said. “Others that have the resources and already tried (or know) Frontity, contact us because they still want a freelancer or agency to help with the development, design or maintenance of the project.”
Frontity is in conversation with some agencies from the WordPress VIP Agency Partner Program and other hosting companies but could not share more details at this time. The basic qualifications for partners include previous experience with enterprise customers in the WordPress space, expertise with headless WordPress and React frontends, and willingness to actively contribute to the Frontity framework.
Not a fan of React, SPA or any other JavaScript framework for any front-end development, but I’m still looking forward to see what 10up comes up with in the near future.