I am proficient enough with php and wordpress to get by so long as I have a starting point, but I generally find it difficult to find that starting point on my own, so I am reaching out for some suggestions on the problem I am trying to solve here.
Here is the main business objective: I am working with a small school photography studio and am trying to build something on their site to better handle class group photo naming. So basically, the photographers go and take pictures of each of the classes at all of the client schools. Some schools have 14 classes some have 30+. Once the photos are taking, we select the best one and photoshop if necessary and then (currently) we print them out and send them back on a form where the teachers have to then list the kids names in each of the rows. They then have to send them back.
OK, so I am trying to translate this into WP to make it much faster. The actual form and page with the image is of course easy to create with a template. The problem that I am having is that I want a way to not have to add each teacher page manually. That would take loads of time.
Therefore, I want to utilize a plugin that I write that will allow a user to upload some data, choose a few options, and the pages will then be created using wp_insert_post().
Here is the general process I want to follow:
Pictures are uploaded separately and are already in gallery with a specific file name.
At this point in time, there are no associated posts, but there is a template that essentially holds a placeholder at the top that will pull in a picture based on teachers last name, then the form at the bottom.
A plugin will be available from the admin menu that will offer a way to use wp_insert_post to create the pages automatically for all teachers and all schools, it should look like the following:
A drop down menu that holds all the school names that are available (this should be populated with all of our schools at some point).
Best case scenario, user should be able to upload a csv file that contains the teachers name, the image name (so can be linked from the gallery on the template page), the password for each teacher.
Once the csv file is uploaded, user will be presented with a table to verify all info is correct, if so, a submit will create all the teacher pages.
Thanks in advance for the help...I am at an impasse right now in trying to figure out where to start this thing.
Mike