How to Use a MongoDB on a WordPress Website

The No. 1 digital habit of today’s generation is connecting with friends through social media.

And what’s the No. 1 platform for doing that? You guessed it – social media, with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all having over a billion active monthly users.

If you’re looking to add some social media capability to your WordPress website, then you’re in luck because MongoDB just happened to be the “database of choice” for both Facebook and Twitter.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how you can use MongoDB with WordPress to create a fully-fledged social media platform that you can take with you wherever you go.

Choosing The Right Database For Your WordPress Site

If you’re new to the game, then it’s paramount to pick the right database for your WordPress site. After all, whether you’re storing images or articles or both, you’ll be needing enough space for what you have.

You’ll want to pick a database that is equipped for the amount of content you have. If you’re just getting started, then consider using a free database such as MongoDB or Firebase. These databases are ideal for beginners because they provide all the necessary features you need while not tying you up with lots of unnecessary constraints.

Installing & Configuring MongoDB On Your Hosting Account

Once you’ve decided which database you’ll be using, it’s time to install and configure it on your hosting account.

In this step, you’ll have to enter a series of details about your site including the name, the email address, the administrator username and the password for the administrator account. You’ll also need to decide how you want your site to be named (ex: blog.yourdomain.com).

Once you’ve entered all that information, click on the “Create Database” button to continue.

Creating Your First MongoDB Database

Creating your first database is straightforward – you just need to enter a name for the database, click on the “Create” button, and you’re good to go.

You’ll then need to fill out a form with your username, the name of your new database, a description of the contents of your database and set the access privileges for your new database. In the example below, we’re going to use the “test” database that you just created.

To begin with, let’s give our database a decent description. Just type a short blurb about what this database is for and why you need it – this will help you and others understand what this database is for.

Next, let’s decide who will have access to this database. Since this database is going to be used by multiple users, it’s important to decide who can and can’t access it. In this case, we want to give our administrator account full access to the “test” database, so we’ll click on the “Allow access to this database” button.

That’s it! Now let’s login to our database account and see how it works.

Using The Database With WordPress

With your WordPress login screen displayed, enter your username and password to log in to your database account. Once you’ve logged in, you’ll be presented with a menu of options. From here, you can either continue staying on the default dashboard or browse your database through a series of tables.

Let’s start by going to the “Users” table and seeing a list of all the users registered on our database. You can click on a user’s name to see their profile page – in most cases, you’ll just need their email address and password to log in to their account.

Clicking on a user’s name will present you with a screen similar to the one below. You can then either continue staying on the default dashboard or click on the “Users/My Profile” button to navigate to the user’s profile page.

If you’ve logged in using Facebook or Twitter authentication, then you’ll find all your associated content (such as posts, pictures and comments) in the “Users” table. You can also use this table to manage the access privileges for your WordPress site by changing the “Administrator” level (found at the top of the table) from “View” to “Editor” or “Contributor”.

To get a better view of the data in this table, you can click on the “View” button below the table to show a limited number of rows of data.

Managing Your Content In The Databse

Once you’ve logged in to your database, you can begin creating and editing content as you normally would on a WordPress website. For example, if you have an article on your homepage with the working title “How to Use a MongoDB On a WordPress Website”, then all you need to do is enter a few words in the “Content” field and hit the “Publish” button to have your article live.

If you’ve decided to allow logged-in users to comment on your articles, then you’ll have to decide how you want those comments displayed – either in a discussion form or as replies to your articles. To keep things simple, we’re just going to display comments as replies directly below the post.

To edit an existing article or create a new one, navigate to the “Posts” section of your WordPress dashboard. From here, you can click on the pencil icon to the right of any article to begin editing.

As you edit the article, your changes will be saved instantaneously – this is one of the major benefits of using a database for your WordPress site. If you’ve decided to use a MongoDB database, then all your changes (including the addition of new content) will be saved to the database instead of the local file system. And since these changes are stored in the database, they’ll be accessible to all users regardless of whether they’ve logged in or not.

To add a new article, simply click on the “New Post” button at the top of the page and you’ll be taken to a form where you can enter a short description of your article. Once you’ve entered all the information, hit the “Create article” button.

Keeping Track Of Your Content

While it’s great to have the freedom to create and edit content whenever you want, you’ll eventually need a way to keep track of all that content you’ve created. For that, you can use a variety of tools available to you through your WordPress dashboard. You can start by simply printing out all the posts in a plain text file or an.html file and keeping it in a safe place – that way, you’ll always know where to find the important information you need when you need it. 

But if you’ve decided to use a MongoDB database, then you can also take advantage of the content tracking tools built into the platform itself – the first of which is the “Content Analytics” plugin for WordPress which can be accessed through your dashboard. This plugin gives you a look at how many times a certain piece of content was viewed and by which users – from there, you can determine the most effective approach to making sure your content is being seen by as many people as possible.

Making Money With Your WordPress Blog

You don’t need to have huge earnings pouring in each month to consider yourself a success as a WordPress blogger – it’s all about the freedom to write and the income you’re making from either ads or affiliate sales based on the content you publish.

To start, try selling and displaying ads from reputable ad platforms such as Google Adsense or Amazon’s Advertise on Web. When you put approved ads on your site, you’ll earn revenue that you can then attribute to specific content – this is one of the easiest ways to make money from a WordPress site. You can also try selling and displaying affiliate products from reputable companies such as Amazon or Clickbank. When a user clicks on an affiliate link and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a commission.

WordPress itself offers many monetization options including the ability to sell and display ads on your site. But if you’ve decided to use a MongoDB database, then you can also take advantage of the many monetization tools built into the platform – including the ability to generate affiliate income from the information users find on your site.

To learn more, check out the WordPress FAQ or visit the WordPress website – they’ll have you covered when it comes to creating a monetized WordPress site.