Planning and Customizing the Core Database

In the previous chapter, we looked at user management and permission related features of WordPress, while implementing basic user creation features. We can now move into one of the most important aspects of an application.

Generally, a database acts as the primary location from which your web application data will be accessible from frontend interfaces or third-party systems. Planning and designing the database should be one of the highest priority tasks in the initial stages of a project. As developers, we have the opportunity to design the database from scratch in many web applications. WordPress comes with a pre-structured database, and therefore the task of planning the table structure and adapting to existing tables becomes much more complex than everyone thinks. Throughout this chapter, we will focus on the basics of planning and accessing databases for web applications. This chapter contains important content for the rest of the book and is theoretical compared to other chapters.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Understanding the WordPress database
• Exploring the role of existing tables
• Adapting existing tables in web applications
• Extending the database with custom tables
• Planning forum application tables
• Querying the database
• Limitations and considerations