Chapter 1, WordPress as a Web Application Framework, walks you through the existing modules and techniques to identify their usage in web applications. The identification of the WordPress features beyond the conventional CMS and planning portfolio management application are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 2, Implementing Membership Roles, Permissions, and Features, begins the implementation of a portfolio management application by exploring the features of the built-in user management module. Working with various user roles and permissions, as well as an introduction to the MVC process through routing, are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 3, Planning and Customizing the Core Database, serves as an extensive guide for understanding the core database structure and the role of database tables in web applications. Database querying techniques using WordPress query classes and coverage of the planning portfolio management application database are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 4, Building Blocks of Web Applications, explores the possibilities of extending WordPress posts beyond their conventional usage to suit complex applications. Advanced use of custom post types and an introduction to managing template loaders are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 5, Developing Pluggable Modules, introduces the techniques of creating highly reusable and extensible plugins to enhance the flexibility of web applications. Implementing various plugins for explaining these techniques with the use of WordPress action and filter hooks is the highlight of this chapter.

Chapter 6, Customizing the Dashboard for Powerful Backends, walks you through the process of customizing the WordPress admin panel for adding new features, as well as changing existing features and design. Building reusable grids and designing an admin panel with various different techniques are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 7, Adjusting Theme for Amazing Frontends, dives into the techniques of designing amazing layouts, thereby opening them up for future extension. Widgetizing layouts and building reusable templates are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 8, Enhancing the Power of Open Source Libraries and Plugins, explores the use of the latest trending open source technologies and libraries. Integrating open authentication into your web application and structuring the application on the client side are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 9, Listening to Third-party Applications, demonstrates how to use the WordPress XML-RPC API to create a custom API for your web application. Building a simple yet complete API with all the main features is the highlight of this chapter.

Chapter 10, Integrating and Finalizing the Portfolio Management Application, guides you through the integration of modules and refactoring the code developed throughout this book. Improving the consistency of the application's code and completing the features developed throughout the previous chapters are the highlights of this chapter.

Chapter 11, Supplementary Modules for Web Development, introduces you to the supplementary WordPress features, such as Internationalization, video embedding, media grid, and multisite. An introduction to important concepts in application development, such as caching, security, and testing are the highlight of this chapter.

Appendix, Configurations, Tools, and Resources, provides an application setup guide with necessary links to download the plugins and libraries used throughout the book.

Technically, you need a computer, browser, and an Internet connection with the following working environment:

Once you have the preceding environment, you can download the Responsive theme from http://wordpress.org/themes/responsive and activate it from the Themes section. Finally, you can activate the plugin developed for this book to get things started.

Please refer to Appendix, Configurations, Tools, and Resources, for the application setup guide, required software, and plugins.

This book is intended for WordPress developers or designers, who know how to create a basic CMS site and are looking for ways to learn the complex web application development in a reusable, maintainable, and modular way. Basic knowledge of WordPress themes and plugin development is expected, although this is not a must for experienced PHP developers to go through this book.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "WordPress passes existing MIME types as the parameter to this function. Here, we have modified the $mimes array to restrict the image types to JPG."

A block of code is set as follows:

function filter_mime_types($mimes) {
  $mimes = array(
    'jpg|jpeg|jpe' => 'image/jpeg',
  );
  return $mimes;
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

function filter_mime_types($mimes) {
  $mimes = array(
    'jpg|jpeg|jpe' => 'image/jpeg',
  );
  do_action_ref_array('wpwa_custom_mimes', array(&$mimes));
  return $mimes;
}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Once the Publish button is clicked, we validate the form and save the error messages as transients."

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