In recent years, WordPress has matured from the most popular blogging platform to the most popular content management system. Thousands of developers around the world are making a living from WordPress design and development. As more and more people are interested in using WordPress, the dream of using this amazing framework for web application development is becoming possible.
The future seems bright as WordPress has already got dozens of built-in features, which can be easily adapted to web application development using slight modifications. Since you are already reading this book, you have to be someone who is really excited to see how WordPress fits into web application development. Throughout this book, we will learn how we can inject the best practices of web development into the WordPress framework to build web applications using a rapid process.
Basically, this book will be important for developers from two different perspectives. On the one hand, beginner to intermediate level WordPress developers can get knowledge of cutting-edge web development technologies and techniques to build complex applications. On the other hand, web development experts who are already familiar with popular PHP frameworks can learn WordPress for rapid application development. So, let's get started!
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- WordPress as a CMS
- WordPress as a web application framework
- Simplifying development with built-in features
- Identifying the components of WordPress
- Making a development plan for forum management application
- Understanding limitations and sticking with guidelines
- Building a question-answer interface
- Enhancing features of the questions plugin
In order to work with this book, you should be familiar with WordPress themes, plugins, and its overall process. Developers who are experienced in PHP frameworks can work with this book while using the reference sources to learn WordPress. By the end of this chapter, you will have the ability to make the decision to choose WordPress for web development.
