Anadama: An Example WordPress Recipe Theme Based on React

Since Matt Mullenweg gave the WordPress community a homework assignment to “Learn JavaScript, deeply,” links to tutorials and training courses have been flying around. Once you have grasped some of the basics, one of the best ways to learn is to start building a small project.

If you’re looking to explore adding JavaScript to WordPress theming, check out Anadama, an experimental React-based theme that uses the WP REST API to deliver content.

Anadama was designed to display recipe content in a vintage recipe book style. This niche theme is well-suited to presentation as a single-page app, since it has no comments or widgets. The homepage features a menu and post titles that pop up as recipe cards.

Anadama is a project still in progress, created through the collaborative efforts of developer Kelly Dwan and designer Mel Choyce, authors of popular themes Flounder and Aventurine.

The theme is small project where you can see an example of how React might fit into a WordPress theme. It requires the REST API plugin and WP API Menus. If you want to take it for a spin and experiment for yourself, clone the theme’s GitHub repo to your test install and then run npm and gulp to install and build the JavaScript and CSS files. If you prefer a more traditional blog example, Dwan recommends checking out her Foxhound theme on GitHub.