Add a check when the plugin is activated to see if the data(column/table) already exists in db or not ? If the data aldready exists then skip the db part and just mark the plugin as active.
Pull data and display as rows and columns
Creating custom database table with crud operation
Create a table with wordpress plugin boilerplate
Least expensive way to get table prefix in multisite installation
Show all data in database table and make it into an interactive table
Modification of how the data is controlled/showed and stored
Retrieve data from the database to table such as comments in the admin control panel
I am not sure why you are creating a UNIQUE constraint for your “ID”, which can be a primary key. Also, please note that the dbDelta fails in certain versions of MariaDB when you create a table with a Unique Key Index or a Composite Key or any other indexes except the Primary Key. The … Read more
This would be best handled as a custom taxonomy. Why? Because taxonomy is already optimized for finding related content. Using a custom taxonomy means you automatically get post edit metaboxes, archive templates, admin screen searches, and more. Creating posts for each item and using a post_meta search would be orders of magnitude slower. I’m running … Read more