The last version of this website, currently still up at HybridLogic as of writing, was built on top of the Kohana framework. Unfortunately what you make up for in power you lose in the ability to just get stuff done. Seriously, don’t underestimate the power of having a blog ready to post in. Anyway, getting back on track, I decided to move over some of my Kohana-specific libraries to WordPress today. This is the tale of what happened.

The two plugins I decided to make first were for my Cinema goings and Xbox Live activity. Both are fairly simple but I decided to give them a complete rewrite ready for WordPress, hopefully in the next few days I can release them to testers and then eventually the public. At the moment they are adorning my sidebar, without even so much as a CSS style to make them look nice currently.

Because of my database schema for Kohana, I could easily port them across with minimal changes. The only major remodelling came in the form of the Xbox games and their associated user data. The original system could only handle one user, version 2.0 can track as many gamertags as you have friends.

Perhaps the best thing about moving to WordPress however is the in-built functionality and design that comes with the admin section. Seriously, just making a paginated table with search and buttons becomes a much simpler exercise when 90% of the code has been done for you.

Later posts will go into more detail on how I structure plugins, how Widgets work, etc but for now if you’re interested in testing either a plugin that tracks recent cinema goings or your Xbox Live activity please leave a comment below.