after a few years break of web development, I now wanted to get back to this topic for a personal project. Before now, I used to work with php and wordpress, but now I want to get bit more modern. I have checked React and very love how it makes the life easier. So I developed a dashboard in React and now I am looking for the best option to build a landing page containing a store directory for this. To save time, I thought to use wordpress for this part because I am more familiar with it.
To get a better image of the project: There should be a landing page (example.com), where anybody can search for shops by location and add new ones to the directory. When a shop owner signs up for a paid plan, he should get access to a separate admin panel (cp.example.com) to manage details which will be shown on a separate page (cp.example.com/shopname).
I have already created the frontend of the shop-specific dashboard (cp.example.com/shopname) in React and now I want to connect it to a CMS (maybe Strapi + Gatsby?) to give shop owners a possibility to login and manage the displayed content. As I have not much experience with React, Strapi, Gatsby or other frameworks, I thought to separate the shop owner part (cp.example.com + cp.example.com/shopname => Gatsby + React) and the landing page with directory (example.com => wordpress) because the directory part can be solved in less than 2 hours with a wordpress theme like Listify.
Now I am wondering if this is a good combination, or will I get security / performance issues doing so? Is it a good idea to save time for the landing page by using a wordpress theme like Listify or am I running into problems when I combine it with Strapi + Gatsby? Can I access WP database entries from a React script and the other way around can I display database content from Strapi on the landing page? Or am I an idiot and there are much better solutions for this problem?
I am open to learn new languages / frameworks, but not necessarily too many at the same time. As the last time I developed a web app, I only used php + html + js, I am now a bit confused about so many new possibilities.
Thanks in advance!
As most of the questions regarding backend technologies, "it depends". You mention, that you have experience with WordPress, why don't you use it for the entire project then? You can use most of the features offered from WordPress and integrate them to interact with React. In this case, you can use WordPress as Rest API provider.
REST API Wordpress HandBook Wordpress REST API for Begginers
Furthermore, If you expect to have more than few visitors a day (probably thousands) you should use, something more robust like PHP Laravel, which can be used for the landing page (with blade templates you can use it with HTML only if you want) and make your project as robust as you need (Front-end and Back-end)
