Wix is a managed platform for building websites and running businesses online. Three audiences use it:
- Site members and visitors: Browse, buy, book, and interact with live sites.
- Wix users: Build and run those sites in Wix’s editors and dashboards.
- Developers: Extend the platform with code, apps, and custom frontends.
This documentation is for developers extending the Wix platform.
The platform supports 3 main development paths, each with its own audience, tools, and distribution model.
- Extend websites: Site code lets you customize how a Wix site behaves. You can control frontend interactions, call backend services, and integrate with business solutions like Stores or Bookings.
- Go headless: Headless development decouples the frontend from Wix. You bring your own tech stack and build your own frontend, then connect to Wix services via Wix's APIs. The full range of Wix's services remains available, from CMS and auth to eCommerce and payments.
- Build apps: Apps are packages of reusable functionality that Wix users install to enhance their sites or dashboards. An app can add a widget to a site page, contribute a dashboard page, inject business logic into Wix services, and more. Apps are distributed through the Wix App Market or installed privately.
For more on choosing between these paths, see Development Paths.
Wix provides the infrastructure, hosting, services, and tooling that most products need, so you build on top of them instead of from scratch:
- Authentication and identity: Wix handles member and visitor sign-in, session management, OAuth client registration, and permission elevation. Where supported, the platform attaches caller identity to API calls and backend invocations, so you don't build auth infrastructure from scratch.
- Sites and frontends: Wix provides multiple site types with different creation models and extension support. Editor and Studio sites use drag-and-drop builders with a Wix-powered frontend. Harmony uses an AI-powered editor. Headless projects use a fully custom frontend built with your choice of framework, and can be either Wix-managed or self-managed.
- Dashboard: Every Wix site includes a dashboard, the operational console for Wix users to manage their businesses. You can extend it with dashboard pages and plugins.
- Business solutions: Stores, Bookings, eCommerce, Events, CRM, payments, and more come ready to use with APIs and extension points so you extend behavior instead of rebuilding it. Access platform services through REST, the JavaScript SDK, and GraphQL, whether you're coding on a Wix site, building an app, or calling from an external frontend.
- CMS: The Wix CMS is the platform's data layer for site content. Wix users edit this content directly through the UI, and you read and write the same content through Wix APIs across all development paths.
- Backend services: Backend code runs in a managed, serverless Node.js environment. Wix handles hosting, scaling, and deployment. The platform provides building blocks for events, automations, HTTP endpoints, scheduled jobs, and custom routing.
- Extensions: Extensions add UI and behavior to Wix sites, dashboards, and editors. Each development path has its own model for building them, with different supported types and ways of reaching Wix users.
- Developer tooling: The platform includes a suite of tools for local and remote development. These include the Wix CLI for scaffolding and syncing projects, the App Dashboard for registering and configuring apps, and built-in code editors for site development.