Hi All- I hope this is the best board for this post - I looked through them all and this seemed to fit. I can move it if the community deems necessary.
ANYWAY - I have been using WordPress (and Joomla of course) to build sites for more years than I can remember but they have been very "article driven" sites with the occasional place for comments. I am working on two new sites (or modifications of existing ones that I created elsewhere) and having spent more hours that I can count looking through extensions, I figured I'd bring this question to the masses.
The two sites I am working on are listed below - do you think WordPress is the write platform to build these on? If so, recommendations for best practices or extensions that can help would be BEYOND appreciated. I have read a lot of articles that got the ball spinning in my mind but I haven't been able to connect every dot.
SITE 1: I built a data driven site using PHP and MySQL a few years back which I have been modifying time and time again. I am not a great coder so I am running into road blocks more and more as time passes. The site is essentially a data tracking, work flow, and report data hub. For example, one user will log in and propose an event and that request goes to their supervisor who can approve or deny, notifying the user. The user, after the event is complete, can evaluate it using some form criteria and enter in some more stats. The information can then be search and viewed based on criteria an exported as needed or used in other areas. That is obviously just one piece of the puzzle. I thought WP might work best if I can find the right extensions for those kind of pieces because I know that some other extensions like a calendar would be great to add in and easy using this.
SITE 2: A directory (I have used Joomla and SobiPro primarily and never WP for something like this) that is primarily used on a mobile device (I would like to convert this over to an iOS app, possibly just embedding this into an X-Code project iframe). The key piece here is that there is the option to view the entries in proximity to the device's location like in the Starbucks app when you can view which store is closest, etc.
This might all be too much to ask, but I figured it was worth a shot. I somehow avoided ever having to asking questions here before and have my fingers crossed for some good guidance. Thank you all so much for your input!