Does CMS being used make native app develoment easier or tougher?

[born2run]

Hi so if I open a news website with a good CMS, would it make it easier/tougher for the native app development (ios / android apps) ?

I am thinking Wordpress for the domain, but is building native apps around it easy? Some guidelines or advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm new to app development setup for news websites.

[LifeinAsia]

Can't speak for WP, but I use Drupal and have been developing an App for our sites. I'm working on the server-side part (mostly DB calls), while an outside developer is working on the App itself. I'll have to go with both- easier and harder.

Easier: The CMS already provides you with several ways to access and present the data, so you don't have to do a lot of wheel re-inventing.

Harder: For most of the screens, I'm doing custom DB calls to get the data how I want and bypass the overhead associated with calls through the CMS.

[born2run]

I'm not very happy with Drupal it's too complicated albeit quite stable with less bugs than WP. However now I see a huge number of good websites using WP. Good Drupal programmers are very expensive now.

[Demaestro]

To support Apps you will want a CMS that makes API development around your existing objects/models simple. I am not sure WP would fit that bill.

[born2run]

So what do you recommend for cms Demaestro? I've seen WP sites who have apps so obviously they work.

[tangor]

Apps are a layer moving to a closed garden means to the underlying data. Find the folks that can do that interface. Data is data, regardless of storage/method used. Presentation is window dressing. Keep It Simply Simple!

[born2run]

Well I'll read up this info a bit more. I think about 30% of the news websites in Internet are using WP as their cms. But I guess you have to make direct interface with the database not thru the CMS?

[LifeinAsia]

But I guess you have to make direct interface with the database not thru the CMS?

You don't HAVE to. Going directly to the DB bypasses all the overhead the CMS adds on.

For me, I use a lot of Drupal's functionality instead of reinventing lots of wheels. For example, I find DB calls through Drupal's functions to be easier than connecting natively through PHP, plus they already have protections against SQL injection. But for more complicated queries (or when I don't need all the data Drupal's functions return), I'll use custom SQL calls.

[Demaestro]

Hi born

Do you have anything built yet? I ask because depending on where you are at in the process, different solutions might be best so you aren't losing or undoing any work.

I have been using Laravel for all my development that or a similar PHP framework would be best for your App API. There are some CMS projects for Laravel you can install (eg. asgardCMS) and have your CMS and API run out of a single "Laravel App"

This really only makes sense if you have the time and resources to use/learn a new tool and depending on the complexity requirements of the CMS you could even just roll out your own micro CMS functionality. One you get up to speed with Laravel development time is very lean.

If you don't have that kind of time another option is to have a CMS like WP run the website. If I were going that route, I would get the CMS running first have it do everything you need, once completed using Laravel (or another framework) connect to the CMS's database, and then build out the API.

I hope this helps and am happy to help answer questions if you go this route.

[alvanorichie]

The easier way without coding is to install Super PWA plugin.

[born2run]

Hi yes I’ll probably go with wordpress