Most programs require some sort of dashboard.  Reading over an article I wrote from 2016, I described an “Arbitrage” program that I built.  What would I have done differently if I were to build that today?  I would have used WordPress.

I’d use a custom post type to store the data and use the Fieldmanager Plugin to spin up custom dashboard features. If my database became large or interesting, I would then index it in Elasticsearch using SearchPress for amazing search capabilities. 

Building something from scratch takes a long time.  It’s a great way to learn, but it’s not the smart way to get something out the door in a short time.

The default WordPress dashboard looks 100x better than what I spun up with bootstrap CSS and has more features and better security.  WordPress is open source code that has been tested and developed over many years.

I’ve built 2 none-WordPress dashboards in PHP.  However, I don’t plan to do it again.

With the WordPress REST API, you can just use WordPress for the database and dashboard (user management built in!), and use it to power a frontend in whatever programming language you choose!   If my dashboard needed a frontend app, I’d create one using Irving, a headless framework for WordPress that is configured with React components.