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WordPress as a Platform<br />Bangalore PHP Meetup – 30-Jan-2010<br />SudarMuthu<br />Research Engineer, Yahoo Labs<br />http://sudarmuthu.com<br />Twitter: @sudarmuthu<br />

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Types of Application<br />Two Types<br />As a WordPress theme or a Plugin<br />As a Standalone Application (BackPress)<br />

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As a Theme or Plugin<br />Extends WordPress (needs it to run)<br />Doesn’t involve modifying the core (mostly)<br />Uses the Plugin API<br />Not necessarily a CMS application<br />

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As a Theme or a Plugin – Some Examples<br />Invoice Application – WP Invoice (http://twincitiestech.com/services/wp-invoice/)<br />Contact Management – RoloPress (http://rolopress.com)<br />Job board – RecruitPress(http://recruitpress.com/)<br />Social Networking site – BuddyPress(http://buddypress.org)<br />

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Standalone Application - BackPress<br />Official Definition at http://backpress.org<br />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.<br />

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BackPress - Features<br />User role management<br />Complete Plugin API<br />XML-RPC Server and Client<br />Object Caching<br />Database Abstraction<br />Pseudo-cron functionality<br />Full HTTP library<br />KSES: Full security filtering for HTML content<br />

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It is advantageous when…<br />You are comfortable in WordPress<br />The server configuration is not known<br />Need to provide backward compatibility to PHP 4<br />Application is not overly complex<br />Quick Prototype<br />You can consider code as documentation ;-)<br />

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It is not so advantageous when<br />You are pretty new to WordPress<br />The application is pretty complex<br />Your application is going to be only on PHP 5+<br />Need to support multiple database types<br />Need to run lot of background processes.<br />

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Thank you<br />SudarMuthu<br />Research Engineer, Yahoo Labs<br />http://sudarmuthu.com<br />Twitter: @sudarmuthu<br />