National Service Stories

Summary

A project to collect first-hand account from people who have done national service.

This project started waaay back in 2003 using Perl with MySQL database/backend.

I converted to WordPress, here’s the highlights:

Used MySQL queries to dump data in format for import into WordPress.
Imported using the the plugin WordPress Import Export.
When the imports went wrong :), I could bulk delete with WP Bulk Delete.
For each type of data, I used Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields.
There’s a variety of code snippets in PHP using Code Snippets plugin. Key functionality required scripting, but code snippets make it easy, so I didn’t have to make my own plugins. For example, with PODS custom post types, the WordPress default search doesn’t work, but a very simple search can be scripted to query the necessary tables. It works surprisingly well and doesn’t require plugins that implement indexes and take up additional space.
For account management, User Registration & Membership with Google reCaptcha.
For the various email notifications, it’s still using default mailer, but logging with WP Mail Logging
To present the sortable searchable tables, datatables.net. There is a plugin, but using the library directly worked better for me.
For Special Exhibits where there are lots of images, I used WP Modula Gallery.
Formidable Forms with Google reCaptcha
Backuply (and hosting provided/cpanel) for saving iterations.