I have a very similar situation to the person in this posting but I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing.
So, I have a potential client that wants to take his current ASP website and convert most of it to a WordPress website. He spent a lot of money and time developing this back end system which is mainly to keep track of his inventory to some great detail. The purpose for having WordPress site is he wants his employees to be able to easily update blog postings, news, and some images and perhaps galleries.
So we would rebuild his current website using WordPress but the search capabilities of the site would all be pulled from his current MS SQL server (inventory information). I am assuming that there is no plug-in for this as I'm guessing most of this would have to be customized to his current back end system. I probably know just enough about this to confuse you but for those of you who understand what I'm trying to do I would appreciate any input on how to go about accomplishing this or if this is even a viable solution.
So my question here is would this project be worth the time and effort?
Many thanks,
Houston
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I’m a completely new developer so forgive me for asking something weird but any help would be appreciated.
I’ve been assigned a feature enhancement task for an application.
The application is a CRM type application built using Core PHP / Phalcon Framework... the DB is on MySQL... it's a fully running application and needs some enhancements to existing features.
The CRM has a list of Contacts. Any user of the CRM who updates the profile of a contact, the system writes the change to it log.
There is a button called “History” when the user clicks on it, it shows the list of all changes that have been made to that particular contact… along with a couple of other information - like a revision history.
The changes are maintained and displayed from a few different tables in the DB.
The system is currently showing the changes but in plain text format.
Now the main requirement is to enhance this feature and make it look like a Facebook Timeline and also make sure that the page load times are much faster and retrieving the history of changes does not take a lot of time and does not affect performance of the CRM.
What should one do in such cases? What are the different ways to render information from different tables without affecting the performance.
I have a website set up to check if certain channels on ustream.com and livestream.com are live or not.
The way it currently works it queries a database table of channels and then for each channel uses the API for the ustream.com or livestream.com to check if it is live or not, and does so each time someone visits the site.
The problem is that in just the first half a day of making the site live it received over 350 visits, and people keep refreshing the page so it had 15,000 hits. Which is great except that it is overloading the database.
I am thinking I need to use a cron job and create a cached page that refreshes every few minutes so that it queries the database and the API's far fewer times per hour.
Can someone give me some pointers on how to go about doing that? I know how to set up a cron job, but how do I create a cached page that is constantly being updated?
Or if you have a better solution I'd like to hear it.
This isn't a paid job, I built it as a free service to help people know which livestreamers are currently live at any particular moment.
Here is a link to the site,
http://freedomfighterstreams.com/
I am using Codeigniter MVC framework.
I would recommemd you this caching library for Codeigniter, since it's more customizable than CI's buit one:
https://github.com/philsturgeon/codeigniter-cache/blob/master/README.md
You'll find usefull examples there.
Your results will be cached as a files.
(posting this as an answer, not a comment, because of the privelages)
I am contemplating building a website for my wedding next year. It would contain information about the event, photos and blogs from my fiancee and I.... you get the picture.
One feature i'd like if possible would be a way of letting my guests RSVP online. I envision that their physical invite has a passcode, which they enter into a text field on the site and tick whether they can or can't attend.
The passcode they entered will be compared against a secure guest-list containing names and passcodes. If it doesn't match, they receive an error message, if there is match however, the information is then relayed to me via email. I will probably build the site using Wordpress, so I would be dealing with PHP.
Can anyone recommend how i might approach this project, as being a front-end dev I have absolutely no idea and my ambition exceeds my limited PHP knowledge.
Would love to hear your ideas or suggestions.
Speaking in generalities, for this sort of thing I find it useful to start by outlining the various components of the system.
While the info pages can be static, you'll need a database to which you can persist your invite data, so I'd start by thinking about the data entities. Devise a list of entities that will exist in the system that might need data tables. E.g. invite, blog post etc.
Then think about the operations that need to be performed on those entities. Are they read-only? Do you need to create new ones, or modify existing ones? You'll need to write code to perform those operations at some point.
Then think about the various ways information from those entities might need to be presented to the user. This gives you an idea of what templates you'll need to build.
If you're thinking of using Wordpress, you can cover off the blog functionality and static page stuff using that application alone. You'd then need to think about how the RSVP functionality might be implemented separately to Wordpress, or within it as a plugin. If you're really lucky, there might be a plugin out there already that will do what you need - or something similar that you can augment yourself.
If you're new to the backend side of things I'd recommend building a blog + static page site using Wordpress, getting it "done" and then looking at the RSVP stuff as a second phase. At least then if it proves unfeasible you still have a useful working site.
Hope that helps!
I'd build this as a simple plugin for WordPress and create an additional DB table that would hold the name against the passcode (this could be auto-generated based on the ID or otherwise).
You could then make a simple admin page when you can add new guests and check the response of guests.
First: congratulations with your marriage. From what I understand you have very little knowledge of PHP so start with reading a few books or articles about basic PHP/MySql. Then, put your ideas in a drawing or flowchart and just go for it. Make lots of mistakes, learn from them, ask for help on SO or a PHP colleague or friend. And above all, have fun doing it.
If I were in your shoes I would install the contact 7 plugin. In the contact form, add passcode as a required text input. Have the results emailed to you and to them. They could make up the passcode which is the downside.
This doesn't have all the options you are wanting but you can either spend several hours writing your own php code and then trouble shoot it, or just install the plugin and be done in 30 minutes.
Basically I have a new client that is after the following functionality from her accountancy website:
A client area in which here existing clients can log into.
a place within the log in are where clients can access documents
such as tax returns etc.
naturally this all needs to be very secure. My question is:
Is there a Wordpress plugin that can achieve this or is their an open source php framework out there that allows me to do this.
I could go through the process myself using php and mysql PDO but apart from encrypting the passwords i am not confident that the security i could program would be adequate. Any recommendations?
You could consider trying WP-Client
It's a Wordpress plugin that was built from the ground up to act as a client portal with the exact functionalities that you describe, plus much more.
http://WP-Client.com
If there are any plugins out there, they probably won't measure up to the amount of security you're looking for.
I would recommend storing all sensitive data outside of the public_html directory so that it is out of grasp for unwanted visitors/robots/etc.
You should also be encrypting all data sent/received with a SSL certificate.
It sounds like you're looking for a lot of functionality- the ability to upload these documents, access them based on users, etc. You may have to code something yourself or find a non-Wordpress solution that works for you. Perhaps you can use login credentials based off of the Wordpress installation...
Update
Since originally writing this I'm now in agreement with user1744188's answer below. WP-Client has been written specifically for this task, and for me it fills a big gap in the Wordpress market. The service I've been given is very good and I think it's priced well considering all the features and the resources you get.
It should definitely be noted, however, that the plugin itself is not open source. The main wp-client.php file in the root of the plugin is a big 0.5Mb monster of a file that has been encoded. Every method has been obfuscated and ties into some unencryption method using the licence key.
So it does what it does but you won't be able to extend or modify it easily.
Original Answer
I agree with John - I personally don't think I'd use Wordpress at all for this. However, I did a job not long ago and they sprung this requirement on me right at the end of the build so I had no choice.
I did it using S2 Member and it worked out well. Here's the ongoing thread on how to do it, the developer is a really helpful guy, he's produced a video to help and supported requests.
www.primothemes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=586
It's WordPress Plugin that connects with CRM to CMS, Means all your data will store in CRM for better management. you can find Here, They Prodive best solution for WordPress Client Portal.
I only began learning about web development 3 weeks ago and have grasped html, css and js quite quickly and have also had some success in using php to draw values from a mySQL database that I have setup however I have a few questions if that is OK?
I am designing a website that essentially allows users to register and then login and add details to a daily log which is stored in the mySQL database. I also want a forum, content section and a shop. Obviously there is no standard open source package for this so I have been investigating how to handcode the PHP to log users in and have them logged in across all parts of the handcoded website. I initially thought I could do this using sessions but I have read that they are bad for SEO? I understand that you can disable them and use cookies but I fear this is all getting a bit over my head? Would it be easier to try and develop this in ASP.NET?
Apologies if some of this doesn't make sense but as I said I am very new to this but I am eager to learn and really serious about it so I will take any information given to me on board. Thanks for your time
This is all very possible in PHP, but what you are asking is for an explanation that requires a book. Speaking of books, there are tons of great books offering help with exactly what you need:
PHP 5 CMS Framework Development: Would teach you about many of the pieces you are trying to assemble by hand including MVC principles.
"Obviously there is no standard open source package.."
Just to name one, WordPress allows users to log in and add stuff to a daily log (it's called a blog), has content sections, and has forum and commerce plugins. Personally, I've been amazed at how customizable WordPress is!
I don't understand your comment about using cookies instead of sessions. I recommend you use the PHP $_SESSION superglobal to keep users logged in during their session.
If you have super-sensitive data in these logs, one option might be to verify that the user's IP has not changed between requests.
I see no reason why ASP.net would be preferable. Personally, I like to learn programming by opening up vim and going at it.
P.S. Be sure you are escaping data provided to you by users before writing it to your SQL database.