Building Web Apps with WordPress

WordPress is much more than a blogging platform. As this practical guide clearly demonstrates, you can use WordPress to build web apps of any type—not mere content sites, but full-blown apps for specific tasks. If you have PHP experience with a smattering of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you’ll learn how to use WordPress plugins and themes to develop fast, scalable, and secure web apps, native mobile apps, web services, and even a network of multiple WordPress sites.

The authors use examples from their recently released SchoolPress app to explain concepts and techniques throughout the book. All code examples are available on GitHub.

• Compare WordPress with traditional app development frameworks
• Use themes for views, and plugins for backend functionality
• Get suggestions for choosing WordPress plugins—or build your own
• Manage user accounts and roles, and access user data
• Build asynchronous behaviors in your app with jQuery
• Develop native apps for iOS and Android, using wrappers
• Incorporate PHP libraries, external APIs, and web service plugins
• Collect payments through ecommerce and membership plugins
• Use techniques to speed up and scale your WordPress app

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Building Web Apps with WordPress
Chapter 2. WordPress Basics
Chapter 3. Leveraging WordPress Plugins
Chapter 4. Themes
Chapter 5. Custom Post Types, Post Metadata, and Taxonomies
Chapter 6. Users, Roles, and Capabilities
Chapter 7. Other WordPress APIs, Objects, and Helper Functions
Chapter 8. Secure WordPress
Chapter 9. JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX
Chapter 10. XML-RPC
Chapter 11. Mobile Apps with WordPress
Chapter 12. PHP Libraries, External APIs, and Web Services
Chapter 13. Building WordPress Multisite Networks
Chapter 14. Localizing WordPress Apps
Chapter 15. Ecommerce
Chapter 16. WordPress Optimization and Scaling