I’m building a website and I’ve decided to use wordpress for the totally public parts (e.g. the blog, about us, etc.), but I still want to have a separate area for registered users of the website that would contain user specific info and options (like chat). My PHP knowledge is limited, but I can learn how to code login scripts etc. if I need to.
My real question is, can I use the registration and login functionality that is built in to wordpress, or will I need to create my own login DB and scripts so that I can have this user specific content?
Of course you can use build-in login functionality! The required function is is_user_logged_in().
Additionally, you can install any of chat plug-in.
Edited: to retrieve user profile data -> get_profile()