Quick Start from an Existing Wix Site

If you already have a Wix site, you can use it as the backend for a custom frontend, with no new project required. Use this to migrate your site to a custom frontend, or to add another frontend (such as a mobile app) that shares the same business data and functionality.

This is a self-managed headless flow: your existing site provides the business data and APIs, while you host your frontend and manage authentication yourself.

Step 1 | Choose an authorization strategy

Your frontend (a "client") must be authorized before it can call your site's Wix APIs. Decide which strategy fits first. It determines the kind of client you set up in the next step:

  • Visitors and Members (OAuth): For a customer-facing site or app used by anonymous visitors and logged-in members. This is the most common choice.
  • Admin (API key): For administrative access to your account's sites and projects, typically from a trusted backend.

Step 2 | Set up a headless client in your site's dashboard

This step is required. In your existing site's dashboard, under Settings > Headless Settings, set up a headless client for the strategy you chose. This gives you the credentials your frontend needs: a client ID for OAuth, or an API key for admin access.

Important: If your frontend redirects visitors to Wix-hosted pages (for example, for login or checkout), you must also add your frontend's domain to the allowed redirect domains and authorization redirect URIs in Headless Settings, or those redirects are blocked. See Set Up a Headless Client.

Step 3 | Connect your frontend in your code

In your frontend code, create a Wix client using the credentials from Step 2, then call your site's APIs with either:

Your frontend now reads and writes the same business data as your existing site.

Step 4 (Optional) | Add more frontends

To connect additional frontends, create a separate headless client for each one. For example, one client for a website and another for a mobile app. Each client gets its own credentials.

See also

Last updated: 25 June 2026

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