How can I programmatically add a store and store view in magento

We want to create Magento Stores and Store views programmatically in a Multi Store environment but can’t find any info that doesn’t send me to the dashboard. We are making many stores for remote users and would like to, either accelerate our process with a batch file or, better yet, allow remote users to set up their stores from a WordPress based site.

One possibility is fiddling with the appropriate tables in the DataBase but we don’t want to miss any crucial aspect. We would prefer to instruct Magento to create the store and view ensuring it’s done correctly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!