Not sure where to ask this - integrating a database with Atahualpa/WP
 

Right now I host the internet's only full pond hockey tournament listing. It is a flat file that I manually update, and the WP page it's sitting on really has no search functionality.

What I'd like to do for this fall is create a database that will house all of the tournament information: names, dates, locations, URLs, etc. Then I'd like to list them out on a WP page but also have some search functionality at the top. So if you're in MN, you could select State=MN in a dropdown, hit "refine", and have it just show the MN tournaments.

I have absolutely no idea where to even begin. I have advanced knowledge of MS Access, but that's about it as far as databases go. Is there any other way to do this, or should I just explore outsourcing?

why not make each tournament a post? add categories for states etc. After all WP is a database.

Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. But I think the displaying of data might be a bit much (example - I think there are a dozen tournaments in Quebec. I'd have to display 12 posts, which may not look as clean as having the data show up in a nice clean list.)

I'd also worry about maintaining this. If I can get my blue sky vision done, I'd just have a simple database/spreadsheet with all of the information, which I could then edit. The dates change annually, so I wouldn't want to have to edit 100 WP posts to edit the dates. It would be much easier with a flat file of sorts.

Not ruling it out, but still hoping someone can envision what I'm talking about and tell me how much it would cost to build it :)

Here is the current page. I'd love the results to show up in a similar format, only with some search functionality at the top.

http://www.backyard-hockey.com/2011-...urnament-list/

And this is kind of what I'd like to do:

http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/race...-0-0-0,00.html

I worked with someone a year ago and they had a wordpress site setup with various classes, different dates, different subjects etc, and they had a search form that you filled in the info ie, say you want a jewelry class in March of 2010. You select jewelry from a pull down, march 2010 from a pulldown and then hit search and the results were displayed.

So it is doable.

Yeah, that sounds about what I'm looking for. Do you know how I could reach this person? Or maybe just point me to the page?

It's definitely "do-able".

I manage a couple of sites for Field Hockey teams in the UK and I was struggling to find a 'Fixtures and Results' plug-in which already existed and worked how I wanted to, so I ended up writing my own.

It can be seen in action here - http://www.northnottshc.net/fixtures...ults/fixtures/ and http://www.northnottshc.net/fixtures...sults/results/ (unfortunately it's the end of the season here so there are currently no fixtures.

The Plugin contains all the necessary admin screens to amend the data in the Dashboard as well as some widgets to show upcoming fixtures and past results.

The plugin isn't openly available on the WordPress site as I'm only a part time WordPress developer as a hobby and I know nothing about whether it would pass any of the WordPress quality standards! If you're interested, send me a PM and I'll forward you the link to where you can download the code and access the user documentation.

This was the first plugin I ever wrote (although 20+ years in IT means I am comfortable with coding etc.). I didn't know PHP, but knew some other programming languages. There is some good documentation on writing plugins and I started off by writing a really simple plugin and expanding from there.