Hello, I have over fifty WordPress websites, but I expect this one to be my most popular. It will also be the biggest and most complex, but I need some help.

On this page, I want to explain what I’m trying to do and try to get some feedback. I’ve learned that some companies charge a minimum of $5,000 or $10,000, which is out of my price range.

I would be willing to pay a consulting fee of $50-$100 an hour, including a meeting to simply talk about the project and various ways to get the job done. If it’s doable, what would you estimate the total cost would be?

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I can probably divide my project into two primary operations – 1) the creation of several hundred pages (hopefully through an automated process), and 2) inserting PHP code into those pages, so I can use a PHP switch and/or database to quickly and easily specify page titles and subtitles, display content, and insert odds and ends.

Page Creation

The home page is symbols.geobop.com.
I want to create a page at symbols.geobop.com/world.
Next, I want to create a page for each of the world’s countries, all of which will be “children” of world. For example …
symbols.geobop.com/world/mexico
Under symbols.geobop.com/world/united-states, I want to create a page for each of the 50 states …
symbols.geobop.com/world/united-states/new-mexico
Each of these state pages will have several children pages focusing on particular symbols, or groups of symbols. It will probably look something like this:

symbols.geobop.com/world/united-states/new-mexico/new-mexico-symbols-of-state
symbols.geobop.com/world/united-states/new-mexico/new-mexico-state-flower
symbols.geobop.com/world/united-states/new-mexico/new-mexico-state-bird

Note: I might replace names of countries and states with codes, in which case a URL would like this: symbols.geobop.com/world/usa/nm/nm-state-bird.

There will probably be about fifteen pages in this series. So 15 X 50 = 750 pages, plus a couple hundred pages for the world’s countries, for a total of nearly 1,000 pages.
Do I have to create all these pages manually, or is there a way to automate the process? If so, is it relatively user-friendly, or does it require more sophisticated manipulation of WordPress, PHP, or whatever?

PHP

Whether I create these pages manually or through some automated process, I’m going to have to figure out some way of “batch processing” them.
That would presumably begin with giving each page an ID. I envision using official country/state codes. So the ID for united-states/new-mexico would probably be “nm”, and the ID for new-mexico/new-mexico-flower would be “nm-flower”.

I also want to give each page a class. For example, the following pages would all have the class “class-bird”.

world/united-states/alaska/alaska-bird
world/united-states/florida/florida-bird
world/united-states/new-hampshire/new-hampshire-bird

Next, I need to somehow insert PHP code into the pages at several locations (e.g. header, sidebar, body) so that I can give each page a title, give it some content, and make certain key items display.
I don’t qualify as a geek, but I have worked with PHP for years and know the basics. However, I don’t have a clue about working with PHP in WordPress. I’m effectively locked out.

Also, some of the things I need to do might be accomplished through basic WordPress functions or plugins. For example, I could insert a drop-down list of the 50 states or an ad in the sidebar via WordPress, as I did something similar using either WordPress or the Astra theme. However, I would need to do it on some sort of template page so it displays on all 50 states.

So, what do you think of this project? Is it doable? Is it something that I could learn to do after one or two hours of consulting, or would I need a specialist to do the whole thing?

Thanks for any feedback. You can contact me here.