Custom database data, generating graphs & reports, etc.

[Chad Warner]

WPGR,

I'm looking for ideas, or to hire someone as a consultant and/or developer for a project.

One of my clients is a nonprofit that helps young children prepare for school. They track demographic and academic info for children. They want to add the following features to their WordPress site:

• Ability to input data sent from other parties (ideally automatically, otherwise manually)
• Ability to generate graphs of data
• Ability for staff members to to create, run, save, and share reports
• Ability to recognize degrees of match in children (based on name, DOB, gender) and provide UI for staff members to confirm matches
• Ability to dynamically generate Google Maps that plot organizations in their DB and show info for those organizations
  

If you have ideas you want to share with the group, feel free to reply to the group. If you're interested in doing paid consulting or developing, please email me directly.

Chad Warner | OptimWise | Websites that Empower Small Businesses | http://optimwise.com

[Topher]

On 12/16/2013 02:28 PM, Chad Warner wrote:

WPGR,

I'm looking for ideas, or to hire someone as a consultant and/or developer for a project.

One of my clients is a nonprofit that helps young children prepare for school. They track demographic and academic info for children. They want to add the following features to their WordPress site:

• Ability to input data sent from other parties (ideally automatically, otherwise manually)

Does this imply an import tool of some kind?  Would imports over-write existing data, or append?

• Ability to generate graphs of data
• Ability for staff members to to create, run, save, and share reports

Would the reports be saved on the server, or to local machines, a la pdf?

• Ability to recognize degrees of match in children (based on name, DOB, gender) and provide UI for staff members to confirm matches
• Ability to dynamically generate Google Maps that plot organizations in their DB and show info for those organizations
  

If you have ideas you want to share with the group, feel free to reply to the group. If you're interested in doing paid consulting or developing, please email me directly.

Chad Warner | OptimWise | Websites that Empower Small Businesses | http://optimwise.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WordPress Grand Rapids (WPGR)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wpgr+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Chad Warner]

Topher, I responded inline.

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Topher <top...@codeventure.net> wrote:

On 12/16/2013 02:28 PM, Chad Warner wrote:

WPGR,

I'm looking for ideas, or to hire someone as a consultant and/or developer for a project.

One of my clients is a nonprofit that helps young children prepare for school. They track demographic and academic info for children. They want to add the following features to their WordPress site:

• Ability to input data sent from other parties (ideally automatically, otherwise manually)

Does this imply an import tool of some kind?  Would imports over-write existing data, or append?

Yes, ideally they'd like an import tool that would append data. They'll be collecting different data about each child from several sources over several years.

• Ability to generate graphs of data
• Ability for staff members to to create, run, save, and share reports

Would the reports be saved on the server, or to local machines, a la pdf?

They want the reports to be viewable in the web interface and able to be saved so that they can share them with other users (within the web interface). Running a report would run the original query against current data, so the resulting report could be different from the original. They also want to be able to export reports, probably as PDFs (maybe including graphs) and CSVs.

[Topher]

I'm probably out, but this looks like a big job.  Is this non-profit well funded?

[Chad Warner]

I get the impression that they are, based on their marketing efforts and the numbers in their 2012 annual report.

[Luke Rumley]

Dare I ask if WordPress is the right tool for the job? Sounds big indeed, and well beyond my skillset.

Luke Rumley

Web Developer

Rumley Design

616.425.8815

[Brian Richards]

I've built all the different components you've described (custom importer, custom tables, custom reporting, custom export, table and charting integrations) on a few different projects over the past year. They were all a lot of fun, and all very dev heavy.

I could help point you in the right direction for all of the pieces, but I'm sorry to report I can't help tackle the project.

Grace and Peace,

Brian Richards

[Chad Warner]

Thanks for replying, Topher, Ryan, Luke, and Brian.

Ryan: It sounds like they're more concerned with completing the project than the number of people required to complete it.

Luke: WordPress may not be the best choice. They currently have some of this system functioning in a Kentico site. I'm creating their new site in WP, so it'd be nice to keep everything in WP, but we're open to having this system separate from their main WP site.

Brian: Given your experience, would you recommend using WP, or looking into other platforms? I appreciate your offer to connect me with the appropriate parties, and may take you up on that.

Chad Warner | OptimWise | Websites that Empower Small Businesses | http://optimwise.com

[Brian Richards]

If it were my site, I'd want everything accessible from the same interface. Knowing that I can build it, there's a good chance that I might. But, knowing that many tools exist to serve purposes like this (maintaining a database of persons and generating reports about those persons), I might also instead look to one of those. It's hard to compete with something that is fully dedicated to a specific purpose, with a team of people and a mountain of features all focused around that end.

An excellent question to ask them is whether or not they want this data and/or the generated reports to be easily accessible on the front-end of their website. If so, I would build it into WP (unless a dedicated service provides easy embeds or a well-documented API). If not, it doesn't really matter where the service lives. You could always add a menu item to the admin menu that points to a remote resource.

Grace and Peace,
Brian Richards