Hi Paul,
thanks for your question.
No, in theory, there is no database limit or limited number of rows.
However, in practice, there have been reports on problems with tables this large. Mostly, they originate from server configuration issues, which influenced the saving of large tables.
This is something to keep in mind, and a reason on why I would recommend against using WP-Table Reloaded if that directory is critical to your customer.
As tables in WP-Table Reloaded also lack query functionality (which I would want for a directory), it might be a better idea to explore other options, like a custom PHP/mySQL implementation.
Regards,
Tobias
Tobias:
Thanks for your quick response.
They also want me to insert a logo in one of the columns (far left) that is a link to the directory member’s website.
They also wanted to put a table that has a link that triggers a pop up ad.
I’m more of a designer and did not know what kind of extra code would be needed to do this – or if it was possible.
I wanted to make sure the issue of having 1200 Directory Members was possible using this plug in.
They love the search feature that they could narrow down the searches by the category name.
It’s for a restaurant type company that wants to display a directory of members – all the restaurants in the large city.
So they could type in “Mex…” and it would display all the Mexican Restaurants.
Logo hyperlinked to the restaurant website.
Then the idea of having a link that would trigger a pop up ad that that restaurant could sponsor.
As far as the 1200 Member Directory do you think this is something to try and see if the database handles it or are you saying… “This is going to cause problems most likely”??
Let me know b/c they really really like this plug in (I used it for another website in the past) features.
Hi,
inserting the logo and the link are no problem, that would just require to insert some HTML code (although that might of course be tedious for 1200 entries).
That pop up add is more troublesome: The actual content of the popup needs to be stored somewhere, so that might have to be implemented as a WordPress page or similar. Another idea might be a different script that gets shown then, e.g. depending on an ID.
Now, after going through your more detailed description, here’s my opinion:
WP-Table Reloaded should be able to handle this table, but the actual process of making changes to the directory might get troublesome here (if they want to use the plugin interface). This is basically the bottleneck. And then there’s of course the risk of that server issue creeping up.
The better choice might therefore be a custom implementation, via PHP/mySQL. This would not only give you more flexibility later on (e.g. if you want to modify the HTML code), but it will result in better performance. The question with that would be the interface. Either your customer adds new restaurants in the database directly, or you’ll need to create an interface.
And don’t worry about that search feature: You can have that for a custom implementation, too! WP-Table Reloaded uses the DataTables JavaScript library for this (from http://www.datatables.net) which can easily be added to any HTML table.
Regards,
Tobias
