I had three goals that defined success with this WordPress Integration
- A seamless integration that retained PlaneViz branding and UI everywhere.
- A single sign-in that, once done, enabled the user to work in the main website and WordPress (to reply to posts).
- The ability to disconnect WordPress in the future without breaking the main website should I want to open another classifieds site without a blog.
PlaneViz is an aircraft classifieds site that already had full functionality, including user profile management. As a small business with limited resources we did this integration in two phases. Phase one was to enable blogging to build content and attract search engine traffic and phase two was to connect the back ends of the main site and WordPress so that we have only one database in play.
I should mention here that we have a development website where all the trial and error takes place before making its way to the production website. You do not want to be subjecting real users to your learning curve.
In phase one my developer installed WP and modified the header and footer so that it looked like the main website. This enabled me to begin building blog content to get the search engines coming by more often. At this point, however, blog comments were disable because we did not want to be operating two user databases: one for the main site and one for the blog. That would have made a seriously unseamless user experience and meant more work later on when marrying the back ends.
The blog had a pretty immediate and definitely positive affect of our search rankings. Next up was completing the integration.
The plan was to
- Have WordPress authenticate users from an external database to enable single sign-in, i.e., use the main website MySQL database for user authentication and registration.
- Hide the WP control panel and admin bar from users, since profile management takes place through the main website UI.
- Keep control panel access for the admin to make posts and administer the blog
The final tweaks were to redirect the comment sign-in/register link to the main site sign-in (or registration) page and to turn on the comments for current and old posts.
Mission accomplished. We now have a powerful blogging and CMS system that achieves all three project objectives of a single sign-on, a seamless user experience, and the ability to disengage the blog without crippling the main site.
If you would like to see our WordPress integration in action then head over to PlaneViz and click on blog in the nav menu on top.