I need some opinions and suggestions to help me get out of this dilemma. Firstly I’m sorry if this kind of question isn’t allowed in here.
I’m not a real programmer but I’ve been doing WordPress for quite some time and have been able to do cool programm-y functions on it.
I am now maintaining a college’s website which has a very cluttered Dashboard due to the previous developer using a premium theme that has a lot of menu items and unused custom post types. At this point, the college has about 200 pages and it’s growing fast. We don’t use posts at the moment.
My latest task is to build a teachers’ profile listing which profile will be edited by the teachers themselves eventually. I need to be able to categorize teachers under classrooms and subjects and the master list will appear in Our Team. This list (based on classroom or subject) needs to be displayed in external websites too.
Due to the specs above, I’ve decided it should be a Custom Post Type with Classrooms and Subjects as its’ category and/or tags. And a teacher’s profile will be authored by the respective teacher (user)
I am having a dilemma on how to best execute this function. At this point here are 2 ways I am considering
1) To create this CPT on the college website itself. This would be the easiest for me to execute as a non-programmer. But I feel that this would just make the Dashboard even more cluttered. Moreover there will be about 300++ teachers and they need to access this Dashboard eventually to edit their profile. I know I can hide unnecessary menu items from them but I think it’s going to be a lot to manage. I’m not sure if I’m just seeing this solution from a smaller angle though… not the bigger picture!
2) To install a separate WordPress altogether just to manage Our Team content. And I will use WP Rest API to pull the content from Our Team WP into the college website. To me, this is neat in a sense that content management for the college and our team is completely separated. Not only am I able to manage the 300 teachers better, but also other configurations would be easier without the noise from the college website Dashboard
However, I have no confidence that I would be able to learn and do WP Rest API. I wanted to use RSS at first (yes you may laugh at me hehe) but I realized that, no way RSS could (and should!!!) handle such large content! It would just burst the server or something.
Would love to hear your thoughts, guys. Appreciate it so much 🙂
1 Answer
I’ve decided that I will do this new function as a custom post type in the same installation as the college website.
I will find another project to learn and use WP Rest API. It’s an overkill to use WP Rest API on this project.
I also realize that Our Team content is really part of the College website. Logically, it shouldn’t be in a separate ‘database’. It would cause backup, restoration, migration and management issues later if I were to maintain these 2 content separately. The only stage it would be logical to separate the content is when Our Team needs to have functions relating to HR, Operations and Personal (eg: personal blog for lecturer, multimedia resources and such).
To solve the clutter issue, I need to remove the unused CPT from the Premium Theme. Delete unnecessary and unused plugins.
Thanks WPSE for giving me the space to ‘brainstorm’ and thanks Fayaz for your comments.