Starting out with Wordpress - Creating a text book application

Question

I am basically a Java/Oracle guy. I was told that it is possible to build any simple Web app with Wordpress.

I successfully installed Wordpress on my machine and am trying to create a text book app. For this purpose, it is an employee database, with fields Name, Address, Department, Designation. I need to have the usual create/edit/search/delete functionality.

The problem with Wordpress is, I really don't know where to start, or how to customize pages.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is Wordpress more for blogging/news style websites than for traditional database applications? If not, how do I customize Wordpress to create the application described above?

Thanking you in advance.

Answer 1

Viability

Wordpress is a great system for many different applications, not just blogging/news style websites.

There are many articles out there that go in to great depth on this, but here is a good one right of: http://torquemag.io/app-dev/

Getting Started

As with any project, there clearly is more than one way to skin this cat, but right off, here are some basics I'd recommend you check out about customizing your Wordpress install:

How to create a child theme: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

How to create a page template: http://codex.wordpress.org/Page_Templates

How to develop a plugin: http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin

Plugins

In addition to this, i'd highly recommend a few plugins, which will help make things easy for you:

Advanced Custom Fields

•Makes it really easy to add Custom Fields, to allow you to store custom information, associated with a post, page, taxonomy, user etc. really easy to use, has great documentation and support, as well as a really nice UI. I'd also recommend paying the 25 bucks for the repeater field, which is really useful.

Custom Post Type UI

•Easy way to add custom post types to your wordpress instal, the default post types are: posts, links, pages. With this plugin you can add custom post types for things like say, employees.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I don't think you're barking up the wrong tree, I think that wordpress can be a simple elegant solution for a web application, and can easily be molded into almost anything you can come up with.

Answer 2

For developed such kinds of application you need to develop a wordpress plugins. You can handle any kinds of database operation there. You can add create/edit/search/delete functionality