WordPress as a Platform Bangalore PHP Meetup – 30-Jan-2010 Sudar Muthu Research Engineer, Yahoo Labs

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) Doesnt 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 ( Contact Management – RoloPress ( Job board – RecruitPress ( Social Networking site – BuddyPress (

Standalone Application - BackPress Official Definition at 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. WordPressbbPressGlotPress

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