I always tell people that, in my mind, there’s no question that WordPress can take anything you throw at it. I’ve been building websites on it for nearly 4 years now professionally and I’ve found quite a few fun little projects have come my way. It’s always a challenge to make WordPress work in a way that is outside the box. So, I thought I’d share a few of the projects I’ve had the privilege to work on over the years.
1. Church Websites
The website I did for Community Christian Fellowship was definitely one of the more complex projects I’ve done. It includes:
- 4 Custom Taxonomies
- 5 Custom Post Types
- An event calendar built entirely out of custom posts
- A customized podcast feed (also built out of custom post types)
- Ministry pages that call data based on a matching taxonomy/page slug system
The event calendar was fun, mainly because it uses a little known WordPress function: meta comparison. You can take custom field data and compare it against a variable to sort and display data that is greater than, less than, equal to, or NOT equal to a specific variable – it’s great for displaying top rated movies in a review database, for example.
2. Dating Website
Editor’s Note: Some pictures may be slightly NSFW – nothing fully exposed, but you may not want your boss seeing these. I wasn’t aware of content when I started the build, but it’s too technically awesome to not include. You’ve been warned.
Yes… a dating website – who knew, right? Also built using custom post types and custom taxonomies, this allows the website owner to fill in data for his client’s profiles and tag them to a specific geographical location. Since the service is invite only, specific user accounts are created for each member. If a user is logged in, they see all the available profiles (and all of the data in that profile). If they are not, they are redirected to a page to ask them to become a member, and are only shown a sample of the available clients. (if you’re curious, the function is the is_user_logged_in() function).
3. Real Estate Site
Built again on WordPress, this has a testimonial section built on (surprise) custom post types. The kicker, however, is the “Options Showroom” – which has javascript galleries built on top of the main WordPress photo gallery, as well as DSIdxPress running to pull in RealTracs user data. Basically, any homes they have for sale that are in RealTracs are automatically updated on their site in real time. We can limit the agent codes to just their office, however, since they are more focused on building.
These sites are only a sampling of what can be done with WordPress, some design knowhow, and a little time. If you want specific information, or have questions, about replicating some of the functionality on a project you have in mind, or want to see what WordPress can do for you, then all you have to do is ask!
