Custom Applications Within WordPress

If you have decided to use WordPress for your website or blog, it is a fine tool that will work right out of the box. Furthermore, shall you decide to create custom applications with WordPress, you can code freely code as you want. In order to create a custom application, you can create a custom php page based on page.php that is located in your default template folder. With a custom application, you can use WordPress function like get_header(), get_sidebar() and get_footer(). With the template file, you can add an inlude file to connect to a different database than the one used in the WordPress installation. Then, you can code freely with ‘pure php’.

To create a custom WordPress application,
1) Create a New Page with WordPress.
2) Choose a custom template for the new page. The template would be based on page.php.
3) Add a little text within the page; such as the text for the top of the page.
4) Choose the new template from the drop down menu.
5) Open you template file in Notepad++ or your desired editor.
6) Code the template file and add any include files.

Notes:

To access any images for the template, you can add the following code:
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(“template_url”); ?>/images/foldername/myfile.jpg” />

To include files, you can add the following code:
include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/foldername/myfile.php’);