WordPress as a Platform

Bangalore PHP Meetup – 30-Jan-2010

Sudar MuthuResearch Engineer, Yahoo Labs

http://sudarmuthu.comTwitter: @sudarmuthu

Types of Application

Two Types

• As a WordPress theme or a Plugin

• As a Standalone Application (BackPress)

As a Theme or Plugin

• Extends WordPress (needs it to run)

• Doesn’t involve modifying the core (mostly)

• Uses the Plugin API

• Not necessarily a CMS application

As a Theme or a Plugin – Some Examples

• Invoice Application – WP Invoice (http://twincitiestech.com/services/wp-invoice/)

• Contact Management – RoloPress (http://rolopress.com)

• Job board – RecruitPress (http://recruitpress.com/)

• Social Networking site – BuddyPress (http://buddypress.org)

Standalone Application - BackPress

Official Definition at http://backpress.org

BackPress is a PHP library of core functionality for web applications. It grew out of the immensely popular WordPress project, and is also the core of the bbPress and GlotPress sister-projects.

BackPress - Features

• User role management

• Complete Plugin API

• XML-RPC Server and Client

• Object Caching

• Database Abstraction

• Pseudo-cron functionality

• Full HTTP library

• KSES: Full security filtering for HTML content

It is advantageous when…

• You are comfortable in WordPress

• The server configuration is not known

• Need to provide backward compatibility to PHP 4

• Application is not overly complex

• Quick Prototype

• You can consider code as documentation ;-)

It is not so advantageous when

• You are pretty new to WordPress

• The application is pretty complex

• Your application is going to be only on PHP 5+

• Need to support multiple database types

• Need to run lot of background processes.

Thank you

Sudar Muthu

Research Engineer, Yahoo Labs

http://sudarmuthu.com

Twitter: @sudarmuthu