Customising Site and Databases

  • tonyfleeds

    (@tonyfleeds)


    7 years, 6 months ago

    Hi,

    I’ve done a bit of development in the past. Customising themes in WordPress, but also building a site from scratch in PHP/SQL, which used a database for site members.

    I’m just starting on plans for a new site, which will be quite database heavy.

    I’m interested to hear other’s opinions on whether a site like that is better built from scratch outside of WordPress, or whether adding extra user databases and custom pages is straightforward to do in WordPress. (Essentially should I use WordPress as the back bone of a complicated user based site – even if it will need extensive customisation, and would it offer any good benefits versus just hand coding a site).

    Sorry if that’s all a bit vague, I’m trying to understand the possible limitations, before I go down a cul-de-sac.

    The site will be matching buyer and sellers in a sector, so for instance there will be two distinct types of user, and a significant amount of additional user data.

    Thanks for any replies!

    Tony

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by tonyfleeds.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Joy

    (@joyously)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    I think using something like WordPress as a base frees you to focus on the details of your custom functionality. You don’t have to worry about authentication, queries, rewrites, or any of the standard stuff. And you benefit from the years of testing that has already gone into it. You can also take immediate advantage of existing plugins that do things you might not yet realize you need, and those that are similar to what you are building can be used as a basis (or at least ideas) for how to build your custom functionality. There are many plugins that create other database tables for what they do.

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    This is not a good place to get arguments against WP 🙂 To play devil’s advocate, the WP code base is huge and complex. A lot more processing is needed to serve a WP page than something hand coded. WP sites are constantly under hacker attacks probing for any weakness. Frequent updates introduce ways for your formerly working site to become broken, requiring time and effort to fix something that was previously working just fine and you hadn’t changed a thing.

    There are also valid arguments why none of that are serious concerns. WP does a number of useful functions that Joy mentioned quite well. But if you don’t need any of them, there may be little reason to use WP. There is no reason you could not have a hybrid site. Use hand coded pages where it makes sense to do so, and use WP where it makes sense to do so.

    You appear to be well aware that decisions made early on can commit you to a certain path that is difficult to alter further down the line. I’m probably preaching to the choir, but it cannot be overstated how important it is to develop a good data schema early on that is efficient, well thought out, and scales well. WP provides meta data tables we can use to store custom data. This is fine for simple data, but attempting to use this schema for more complex data that requires different sorts of queries would be a very bad choice. There is nothing wrong with creating custom tables for such data.

    Dion

    (@diondesigns)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    Taken as a whole, WordPress is ill-suited for what you described. However, WordPress contains many well-written features that would greatly speed up your development. So I suggest taking hidden option #3. 🙂

    WordPress is licensed under GPLv2, which allows you to use any part of its codebase in your own work as long as you abide by the GPLv2 terms. In particular, incorporating WordPress code means your application would also fall under the umbrella of GPLv2. If this sounds like something you might want to pursue, carefully read the license.txt file that is provided with every copy of WordPress, and then decide whether its terms are acceptable to you.

    Thread Starter tonyfleeds

    (@tonyfleeds)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    Hi,

    Thank you all for your comments. They replicate perfectly the argument going on in my head! I shall have a ponder. Dion, I’ll take a look at GPLv2, as a third way is starting to appeal. I’m thinking maybe a WP site, but with some hand coded parts too. I think I need to look at how easy or possible it might be to pass users back and forth between the WP and non-WP aspects, and if that login process could work across the whole site.
    Thank you!

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    As long as all of your site is running under the same domain, it has access to the WP cookies to confirm login status. You could create code similar to wp_authenticate_cookie() or simply copy the WP version, along with required dependencies. All the dependencies actually gets pretty involved. A rewrite is probably in order to minimize dependencies.

    Thread Starter tonyfleeds

    (@tonyfleeds)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    Thanks bcworkz, that’s useful to know.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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