[eluser]muttlogic[/eluser]
I've developed data-intensive applications in CI on sites that use WordPress and other CMS on the front-end. The biggest issue I've found is how to render the CI application within the CMS template (including, typically, dynamically-generated navigation menus).
The approach I've used that reduces the coupling between the CMS and CI is as follows:
* Within the CMS template, include recognizable tags embedded in HTML comments.
* Use Curl within the CI application to fetch this page and parse out the HTML code that encapsulates the content area (which are easily parsed using the tags mentioned above).
* Generate views with CI using the extracted template described above.
I've simplified this this a bit, buy you get the idea. Using this method, the CI application automatically adjusts template sections dynamically generated by the CMS without the user, programmer or designer being involved.
If you're concerned about the runtime of the Curl fetch of the CMS page, you can also run a crontab job that extracts the template automatically ever 'N' minutes and sticks them into files. The CI application can then just read the template from the files. This will allow the CI app to run faster while still adjusting automatically to changes from within the CMS.
-Jeff