This is the first of hopefully many posts to show how to use WordPress as a software application framework.
I’ve got a personal library of local history books that I want to manage using WordPress.
Using the List block
Using the List block in the WordPress block editor, I can easily create a list of my books, like this:
- Images of America: Citrus Heights
- Becoming the City of Citrus Heights
- Sylvan Cemetery: A Living History
Boom.
Done.
No coding required.
Simple, but stupid
The list block is a simple, but perhaps stupid way to list a library of books.
I mean stupid in that there’s nothing dynamic about this list. If I get rid of a book or buy a new one (which I have a bad habit of doing), I have to manually add it to the list above. There’s no source of data that this list is pulling books from.
There’s also nothing preventing me from adding non-book items to this list, such as a video game I’m playing, or what I want to buy from the grocery store.
What I really want is a dynamic list of books where the user can click on a title to see details, similar to how a website will sometimes show titles to articles where you can click the title to see the article’s content.
Better ways to manage a list of books
Next time we’ll look at betters way to create a list of books using WordPress.