What Hatch Connect does, and what it does not
Hatch Connect is the easiest way to deploy a headless frontend for WordPress to your own Cloudflare account from the dashboard. What it does, what it needs, and what it never touches.
Last updated November 3, 2026
Hatch Connect is a WordPress plugin that publishes an easy-to-deploy frontend for your site on Cloudflare. WordPress stays your back office. You write posts, pages and menus with the normal block editor, and visitors see a small Astro-built site that runs on Cloudflare’s network.
What “headless” means here
Headless means the part visitors see and the part you write in are separate. WordPress keeps your content and settings. A separate frontend reads that content over the WordPress REST API and shows it. Hatch builds, uploads and connects that frontend for you, so you do not run a server or write a deploy pipeline.
What you get
- One-click deploy from the dashboard. Hatch uploads the frontend to your Cloudflare account as a Worker, then shows you the live address.
- A documented REST bridge. Posts, pages, menus, search data, custom post types and block output are shared under
hatch/v1. See the REST bridge explained. - Plugin connections. If you use an SEO plugin, a forms plugin, WooCommerce or Advanced Custom Fields, Hatch reads their data and passes it on. If none is installed, that feature stays off.
- Forms, comments and accounts sent from the frontend are handled by your WordPress site.
- Automatic refresh. Publishing or updating content tells the frontend to show the change.
- Security switches you can turn on or off. See Security hardening.
What you need
- A Cloudflare account. The free plan includes Workers.
- A Cloudflare API token with the permissions in Create the Cloudflare API token Hatch needs.
- A site that is online and uses https, so Cloudflare can reach it. A site on
localhostcan use the REST API, but a deployed frontend cannot read from it.
What Hatch does not do
- There is no Hatch server, no Hatch account and no Hatch-hosted deploy service. The plugin talks to Cloudflare directly from your site.
- It does not send usage statistics or check a Hatch server for updates.
- It does not create users or Application Passwords for you. You create a low-privilege account yourself.
- It does not change your theme. Hatch does not install, bundle, switch or remove any theme.
Nothing on your site or in your Cloudflare account changes until you press Deploy, and you can undo it later with Disconnect.