Building Web Applications with WordPress

Is this possible? Why would you want to do that?

Well, ever since me and a partner released RoloPress back at WordCampNYC, people have been asking me how it works. Essentially, RoloPress converts WordPress into a Contact Manager. It is not meant to be embedded in a blog, it is meant to be a standalone web application, just like Highrise, Zoho CRM and Salesforce.com. In fact, RoloPress has absolutely nothing to do with blogging. Technically, RoloPress is a Parent "Theme" with a lot of built-in functions. When you activate a RoloPress Child theme, a ton of functions automatically convert your WordPress install into a contact manager... it's that simple. You can add plugins to enhance it, just like you would any other WordPress website, and you can easily modify or create a child theme to make it look like you want.

So why did we choose WordPress is build our application, instead of building it from scratch? The WordPress "platform" (as I like to call it), is stable and secure and offers a variety of features right out of the box:
-User roles
-Custom Taxonomies
-Custom Post Types (coming in WP 3.0)
-Ability to theme
-Ability to expand via plugins
-Automatic database creation
-RSS feeds for everything.
-Easy to modify the administrative menu system.
-URL mapping (pretty permalinks)
-Caching (can also be enhanced via plugins)
-Support for publishing via Atom, XML-RPC, and email as well as automatic pinging.
-A huge community of contributors that will continue to support WordPress and make it even better and keep it secure.
Imagine having to build all this functionality before we even started on the Contact Manager portion!!

The goal of this session is to get you thinking out of the box about WordPress, and think of it more as a platform. These techniques will allow you to begin building an application, or enhance your current WordPress website or blog by giving it super powers.

* Everyone will get something out of this one; from beginner to advanced *