Application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc. are common nowadays. If you've ever used them or read about them, you probably know what they do and how they help speed up web application development. In this article, we will discuss the common features of most of these frameworks and their similarities with WordPress.

What is a web application framework?

Simply put, an application framework can be called a set of reusable code libraries or classes. Frameworks allow designers/developers to focus on their software and business logic rather than general details like user management, database connections, error logging, caching, user-friendly link generation, etc. This helps reduce development time.

Some of the most widely used web application frameworks are Ruby on Rails, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, and Zend. These frameworks are built on MVC architecture to separate various aspects of the application.

Since the purpose of this article is only to compare these frameworks with WordPress, we will only discuss frameworks built with PHP for now, since WordPress also uses PHP.

Advantages of using a web application framework

PHP is a widely used programming language. It has received negative criticism in the past, but usually not because of flaws. PHP has a small learning curve, making it easier for anyone new to programming to start using it. This resulted in some users using shortcuts that made their website/app less secure.

Since every developer has a different coding style, using a framework helps in some ways to ensure that everyone is writing in a standard way and following conventions.

Below you will find a list of some of the features provided by these frameworks:

• User Management
• Template Engine
• Error record
• Localization
• Form and data validation
• File upload and media management
• Image Processing
• Search engine friendly URL
• Session Management
• Citations, XML-RPC and API
• Ability to extend using hooks and classes or plugins
• Automatic code execution scheduling
• Caching

WordPress has most of the above functionality built-in. So the question is, why can’t we use WordPress as a framework? As existing users of WordPress, we already know the classes and conventions used by WordPress. Using this for larger projects will allow us to leverage our existing knowledge to create larger, more complex web applications faster using the tools we love to use.

The features of WordPress make it an exciting framework tool:

1. Administration and Dashboard

WordPress undoubtedly has one of the best admin backends out there. This is probably one of the reasons why average users have been able to adopt WordPress so quickly. Well-organized menus, dashboard widgets, and responsive design definitely make WordPress better than any other framework, at least when it comes to backend design.

Adding custom menus or creating separate data entry screens for different data sets (thanks to custom post types) is easy to do.

The dashboard allows a quick overview of the website and its content, you can also create your own dashboard widget with a few lines of code, for example:

	// Function that output's the contents of the dashboard widget
	function dashboard_widget_function() {
		echo "Hello World, this id my first Dashboard Widget!";
	}
	// Function that beeng used in the action hook
	function add_dashboard_widgets() {
		wp_add_dashboard_widget('dashboard_widget', 'Example Dashboard Widget', 'dashboard_widget_function');
	}
	// Register the new dashboard widget into the 'wp_dashboard_setup' action
	add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'add_dashboard_widgets' );

A great example of these dashboard widgets is the Google Analytics plugin, which provides a quick summary of the past 30 days of analytics in a small dashboard widget.

WordPress dashboard design can also be changed using CSS to make it white label.

2. User management and access control

One of the most important aspects of any application is user management and access control. WordPress offers an excellent user management tool and the ability to extend access control to different parts of the application using roles and functions.

By default, and without even a single line of code, WordPress allows different roles such as Administrator (with full control), Editor, Contributor, and Subscriber. Using this mechanism makes it easier to extend the level of control you give your users to manage different parts of your website.

3. Template engine

In addition to the back-end functionality, another important part of any project is creating the front-end portion of the website. WordPress has one of the simplest templating systems, along with detailed documentation and a growing and active community to help you when you get stuck.

Since it is not based on MVC – Model View Controller, even designers with zero basic PHP knowledge can start using WordPress more easily.

4. Localization

WordPress has built-in functionality to support localization. It also offers dynamic class generation so theme developers can make websites more accessible whether users read from left to right or right to left.

5。插件

截至今天，WordPress 目錄中有 20,105 個活躍的免費插件。還有數(shù)千個免費的高質(zhì)量插件，只需支付少量費用。插件擴展了默認功能，以提供不同類型的功能，包括緩存、站點地圖生成、與第三方服務(wù)集成、多語言網(wǎng)站內(nèi)容等。

6。緩存

緩存是任何網(wǎng)站或基于 Web 的應(yīng)用程序的重要方面之一。它有助于減少服務(wù)器負載并提高網(wǎng)站速度。 WordPress 提供了一種簡單的緩存機制，只需幾行代碼即可激活，對于想要更多控制的用戶，有一些插件可以提供對網(wǎng)站緩存方式的完整控制，并且還提供與第 3 方內(nèi)容交付網(wǎng)絡(luò)的集成。< /p>

7。搜索引擎友好的網(wǎng)址

WordPress 只需點擊幾下鼠標(biāo)即可生成用戶友好的 URL，并且它與其他內(nèi)容生成部分完美集成。

8。文件上傳和媒體管理

WordPress 擁有最好的上傳和媒體管理功能之一。它不像 Instagram 那樣提供時髦的圖像處理功能，但它確實提供了最常用的功能。

通過拖放上傳、縮略圖生成、數(shù)據(jù)項（例如“發(fā)布”與多個圖像）之間的連接、自動圖庫創(chuàng)建，WordPress 確實為媒體管理提供了不錯的功能列表。

9。掛鉤、操作和過濾器

WordPress 提供了許多鉤子，允許開發(fā)人員在特定時間調(diào)用函數(shù)。這些用于將 CSS 和 JavaScript 添加到網(wǎng)頁的 head 標(biāo)簽，在帖子末尾添加廣告橫幅等。

10。錯誤記錄

PHP 有一個標(biāo)準錯誤日志系統(tǒng)，可以通過將以下行放入 wp-config.php 中來在 WordPress 中激活該系統(tǒng)：

	@ini_set('log_errors','On');
	@ini_set('display_errors','Off');
	@ini_set('error_log','/home/example.com/logs/php_error.log');
	/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

11。 XML-RPC 和 API

WordPress 支持 XML-RPC，允許在網(wǎng)站上遠程發(fā)布數(shù)據(jù)。目前，這僅廣泛用于從博客客戶端到 WordPress 網(wǎng)站的遠程發(fā)布，但是請將其視為允許您的桌面應(yīng)用程序與基于 Web 的應(yīng)用程序進行通信的東西。

12。多個實例

WordPress 最好的功能之一就是 WordPress 多站點。它允許您從一組核心文件運行多個 WordPress 實例。這可以用于創(chuàng)建多語言網(wǎng)站、特定于國家/地區(qū)的應(yīng)用程序?qū)嵗?，也可以用于?chuàng)建像 Shopify.com 這樣具有在線商店網(wǎng)絡(luò)的動態(tài)內(nèi)容。這也是 WordPress.com 運行的基礎(chǔ)。

WordPress 最初是作為博客應(yīng)用程序創(chuàng)建的。然而在過去的幾年里，WordPress 社區(qū)的優(yōu)秀人才不僅定制并使用它來構(gòu)建博客，還構(gòu)建了報紙網(wǎng)站、房地產(chǎn)主題、論壇和問答網(wǎng)站以及許多其他網(wǎng)站的門戶網(wǎng)站.

結(jié)論

選擇 WordPress 時，您還應(yīng)該了解 WordPress 的局限性。 WordPress 功能豐富，因此當(dāng)用作大型應(yīng)用程序的基礎(chǔ)時，您將擁有許多觸手可及的功能。但是，如果您的需求需要大量定制，并且在太多不同的數(shù)據(jù)類型之間進行互連，那么 WordPress 可能不是最佳選擇。

如果您將 WordPress 不僅僅用作 CMS，請與我們分享您的項目，并在下面的評論中告訴我們它的獨特之處。