I am developing a relational database (DB) application using PHP. I'm thinking I want it to run on a Wordpress (WP) site. The themes, style, user management, other administration etc. would all be conventional WP stuff.
I envision that my code would be executed from what WP calls a Page. Other preconceived ideas are -
- The DB would be separate from the WP DB but on the same server as the WP DB. My tables could be added to the WP schema but so far there are no inter-relationships and it looks like it would make for cleaner DB management to keep them separate. What have I missed?
- Using conventional PHP coding practices suggests that the code would really reside in the file system and be invoked using a simple include within a Page. It occurs to me that I'd like to reference WP variables for locating the file system. Is this valid? Is there any good practice for file system structure? How do I go about find the WP file system location?
- The resulting HTML would look to WP like a Page. What restrictions might exist on what kind of HTML my app can emit?
- MySQL allows for several APIs to be used with PHP. It looked to me like PDO is preferred but is there some reason that this is a good or bad choice when run under WP?
The preconceived ideas are things I can think of but what have I failed to think of which is especially important?
Is there any documentation or tutorial based on prior experience doing similar things? It is hard to imagine that there haven't been lots of people wanting to do what I have in mind.