Is this dynamically driven scenario possible? (Database / WP)

  • A colleague has been investigating the use of WordPress as a way of sharing research results with the broader community. The first iteration of the system, created by a volunteer, is not *exactly* what my colleague is looking for. I’m trying to confirm that what my colleague has in mind is a) possible and b) relatively easy to implement in WordPress.

    This is the scenario with some details smudged to preserve confidentiality of the project:

    + A database of approximately 500 objects from the Victorian period.
    + Each record in the database includes such categories as date, object description, object status, type of object (snuffbox, monocle, fire poker), and date the object was discovered. There is one record for each object, and each record has approximately 25 fields (all alphanumeric data).
    + Most records also include photographs and hand-drawn illustrations of the objects. Some records have just one or two images; others have as many as five or six images. These images are not stored in the database.
    + My colleague currently maintains the master database as a FilemakerPro file.

    This is what we would love to see in the final version of the site:

    + A user interface that allows the user to search on any of the fields (e.g. date, object status, object type).
    + A search results page that displays a list of search results, with a single line of descriptive text for each search result.
    + An expanded object detail page that displays all of the information is a nicely formatted way. All available images would be displayed at the bottom of the page. Either in a slider or just in a grid of images if that is easier.
    + The ability for my colleague to modify the database on the back-end and then see the changes reflected in the site. Since this is a flat-file database with fewer than 500 records, I’m imagining that this might be a CSV file that my colleague exports from Filemaker and uploads to the server over the previous database. (Assume that no essential fields are deleted from the database and no new required fields would be inserted into the database).

    Instead of referencing images as objects in a database, the flatfile database might include a field identifying the number of photos and the number of drawings, and a naming convention would be used to automatically figure out the necessary filename and location on the server.

    In the first iteration of the site, the volunteer did a heroic job of converting all of the records into static pages in WordPress and they also inserted all of the images into sliders. (I think they did this because they couldn’t figure out how to deal with images when the source file was a CSV). However, the only way to search the content is through the site’s search function. Most important, the only way the content can now be changed is through the WordPress interface rather than by tweaking the database.

    My question is whether or not we can achieve something relatively close to what my colleague envisions by using WordPress and (possibly) MySQL. Also, if achievable, does this sound like a relatively straight-forward WP scenario?

    Assume that the developer working on this project (me) has been involved with similar dynamically driven web sites in the past, using languages such as Perl, C#, and ASP. Though I’ve been away from the back-end code trenches for a while, I’m certainly capable of churning through a few manuals and figuring things out. I’m also comfortable with CSS, JS, and HTML5, and understand the basics of template customization in WordPress.

    Ideally, I would love to set something up for my colleague that makes it relatively easy for them to just upload a new flatfile database and associated images to the server, without having to go back and manually update each record’s page individually on WordPress. I should also note, in case it’s not obvious, that this is *not* a relational database. It’s a small collection of objects that will not get much larger, and my colleague definitely wants to keep it that way.

    Thanks in advance for any thoughts and suggestions. They are sincerely appreciated!

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  • It’s definitely possible and WordPress is set up to make this possible, but it does mean you’re going to be doing some significant custom development rather than a simple plug ‘n’ play solution.

    I would do some reading on custom post types. What you’re probably going to want to do is set up a custom post type like “object” and then set custom fields, associated only with the “object” post type, for each of the 25 or so fields you have for the object.

    Once you have that set up, you’ll have a whole new section of the admin called “Objects” with a list of fields for each object, and your colleague can go in and add and edit and delete objects as they would any ordinary post or page. It’s also possible to do a bulk import if you look into some CSV import plugins, but you wouldn’t want to do this every time you make a change, just when you’re getting set up the first time!

    Personally, I like to use WP-Types for this sort of thing, but you can code it from scratch or use other plugins.

    Good luck!

    Thread Starter adelwich

    (@adelwich)

    Thank you, kstarcher!

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