Overview

I looked into whether it is possible to build a booking site with WordPress that allows reservations based on a pre-defined timetable, like yoga lesson bookings.

The research found that adding the Event Manager and WP FullCalendar plugins to WordPress should make it possible to build the intended lesson booking site.

However, the booking form did not work out well, so I will investigate again at a later date.

Installing Wordpress

I installed Wordpress on my Windows PC by following the site below. There were a few stumbling blocks along the way, but I forgot where exactly they were.

Installing WordPress 5.8 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - Qiita

Booking Calendar Plugins

There are countless plugins for booking calendars and researching them was quite a task. There are many booking calendar plugins available, but most did not meet the requirements. This investigation revealed that even though they all fall under the umbrella of "booking," there are many different types. For example, at first glance bookings for yoga schools and bookings for esthetics salons/hair salons seem similar, but they are actually quite different.

Online Lesson Booking

Bad
- Setup method is difficult to understand
- Cannot manage remaining seats

Salon Booking

Bad
- Cannot specify a timetable

MTS Simple Booking

Good
- Setup method is easy to understand
Bad
- Can specify a timetable, but the same timetable applies every day
- Cannot cancel

https://keimarublog.com/how-to-mts-simple-booking-c/#index_id0

Events Manager

https://howcang.com/2019/11/19/events-manager/

Very good!
When used together with WP Fullcalendar, it looks excellent, but the booking form could not be set up properly. Will investigate again later.

About WordPress Architecture

To use WordPress, you install Apache, PHP, and MariaDB on a server such as Linux. Apache serves as the frontend, PHP is the application layer, and MariaDB is the backend database.

That's all.