Execute multiple PHP files on a single page

If the REST Web Panel worked without WP, it still should work without WP. This would mean that logging into WP would not have any effect on RadioDJ access, it’s a completely independent app, presumably with it’s own access control. It would also have it’s own stylesheet that probably has no relationship with your WP site. Since it is not a public page, how important is that?

That said, it should be possible to integrate the REST Web Panel into the WP. How difficult that is would depend on how the RadioDJ code is set up. The way to start is to convert whatever .php page that constitutes the main Web Panel page into a custom WP page template. Page templates are part of your theme. To avoid the risk of custom work being lost when the theme is updated, a child theme should be created.

Converting a .php file into a template is mainly a matter of adding a specific comment header at the top of the file and locating it in the child theme folder. The comment is something like /* Template Name: Web Panel */ With that in place, create a new WP page and select the “Web Panel” template. The only other requirement is to assign a title. Publish the page. The web panel is then accessed through this page’s permalink.

This page will still not appear like other WP pages unless calls to get_header(), get_footer(), and maybe get_sidebar() are added. The main HTML containers in your theme’s page.php file would need to be replicated for main content to be styled as other WP pages. The original code likely loads other PHP code pages with statements like include, require, include_once, or require_once. The correct relationship to these other files needs to be maintained, either by moving the other files or by correcting the references.

To restrict access to this page, it can be password protected, or restricted by user role or capability. The latter can be achieved by adding something like if ( ! current_user_can('manage_options')) wp_die('Insufficient permission');

That is the basics of integrating existing PHP into WP, but many other adjustments may be required, or that may be all that’s needed. To achieve proper integration, you may need professional assistance. Experts in working with WP can be found through jobs.wordpress.net.

No, I knew nothing of RadioDJ. I was going on what I knew of typical PHP apps and made some educated guesses. Thanks for the link, seeing the actual files gives me a better idea of what may be involved.

It does appear it can be integrated into WP, but it will take some modification. Besides what I mentioned previously, there could be some jQuery conflict, depending on what your theme does with it. This too can be resolved. It appears the app is largely jQuery driven, the PHP serves more as a scaffold than anything else.

You might consider running outside of WP just to get it up and running quickly. Better integration can be worked on in the mean time. I’m not sure how the public site would interface with the RadioDJ stream, but there ought to be a way. Another possibility for quick integration would be to run the app outside of WP but run it’s display through an iframe on a WP page.

A basic iframe is just HTML like this: <iframe src="http ://example.com/"/> (without the space before the colon. I hate the way this forum’s parser “linkifys” properly formatted example links. You’re not the only one with quirks 🙂 ) But getting the iframe to look right will take more effort, mostly CSS. But what ever that example link really is of course needs to work correctly on its own.

There may be nothing wrong with the links to other resources. 403 errors are a file permissions issue. Usually, folder permissions should be 755 and files 644 on ‘nix systems. Straightening out permissions may be all that is necessary for functionality. While it’s fine to test your installation on localhost, you do not want to allow public internet access to it unless you are an expert in public web server management. I fully understand the need to keep costs down, but leasing space on a shared commercial server is money well spent. As long as your traffic load is within reason, it need not cost that much. As you are running a streaming service, you’ll need to make some reasonable estimates on total bandwidth. You don’t want to go over, but you don’t want to buy more capacity than you need either. In any case, I don’t think a typical home computer setup is going to be able to handle a public streaming service for a number of reasons.

The reason to add a virtual host is in part so you can use your domain name locally so when the site is moved to a commercial server you don’t have to change any internal links. It does not enable public access, that is a different process, which you should avoid IMO.

The help page for RadioDJ says it is powered by Simple Machines Forum. If that’s the case, why use WordPress at all? Will RadioDJ provide enough functionality without SMF? Or is it a prerequisite? I initially thought RadioDJ was a stand alone package. If it needs SMF, integrating with WP seems very unlikely, though you can certainly have two separate packages running in a single website. They can be styled to appear similar, and interlink to each other, but they cannot be fully integrated.

Here’s what I suggest you do first. Resolve the 403 permissions errors by confirming all folder and file permissions are as previously stated or correct for your O/S. Ensure Apache is running as the user that owns all Apache related files. The user is set in the Apache configuration file, usually httpd.conf.

Determine what else is needed to get RadioDJ working since it appears to be critical to the entire projects. Everything else can be managed somehow, but without RadioDJ you will need an entirely new plan.

OK, I got RadioDJ itself and Web Panel conflated together in my mind. I kinda understand the difference now. Definitely all new to me. The fact remains we need to get rid of 403 errors in Web Panel. You can allow outside internet access to localhost if it’s on a fixed IP address and the Apache configuration is setup to allow it. But you don’t want just anyone to access it, only your DJ’s. If they are on fixed IPs, you can whitelist their IPs in Apache. They probably have dynamic allocation though, so their IP changes from time to time. I’m not a security expert, so I’m unsure of good alternatives. All I really know is you need good security with external access.

All I can tell you about the 403s is the Apache user specified in its configuration file needs to be the file and folder owner within Apache’s realm. If you change anything in the configuration file, you need to restart Apache. How the owner is set depends on your O/S. Commercial servers often run the mod_security module that can cause 403s even with correct ownership, but you wouldn’t be running it on localhost I should think. If it’s loaded, it’ll be in the configuration file somewhere.

You can use that plugin if you want, it’s your site. It introduces security vulnerabilities that are easily avoided by introducing PHP properly. It’s basically a crutch for those unwilling to learn about the Shortcode API. Shortcodes achieve the same end without any vulnerability.

In any case, introducing the the panel that way will not work without a lot of adjustments because the relative paths to other resources will be wrong. IMO the best way to introduce the panel into the site is through a HTML iframe. This solves all the relative reference issues since the panel is running in it’s own space, the iframe is essentially creating a remote viewport to the panel running normally outside of WP.

Hmmm. I’ve always been focused on keeping people out. I believe it’s a matter of using the right IP addresses. Your internet gateway needs to be on a fixed IP. That’ll get the outside to your router. I’m not sure how packets get to the actual computer from there. Some sort of port forwarding setup in the router I think. Then the IP you use for WP is the LAN address, usually something like 192.168.0.x.

If you search for information on setting up a web server on a LAN, you should get better information than I can give you. Good luck!