About Project
Back in 2018, before switching my career to web development I used to work at “Oman Made Marketing” as a project manager. Back then, I was the one in charge of creating their business directory WordPress website. Two years later they contacted me while working at “Motaweron Web Solutions” asking for a mobile app version for their business directory. I informed the head of management of the available project who then took the project and assigned me in charge of building the API necessary for the mobile app.
Key Features
- Users can browse directory listings extensively using various filters.
- Interactive map displaying search results and listing details.
- Users can create new accounts and subscribe to various plans.
- Users can create and manage listings.
- Localization: Supports two languages (English - Arabic).
- A separate admin panel for mobile API management.
- Firebase notifications.
Problems
- WordPress REST API had a considerably slow response time due to multiple reasons, one of which is the insufficient server resources.
- The platform was using too many custom post types and custom fields generated with a 3rd party plugin which in return added an extra layer of complexity.
- The web version had a huge database with millions of records.
Solutions
- As a temporary solution, we had to use a separate database serving the mobile app and hosting as much data as possible to help speed up things a little bit.
- Tweaked the WordPress REST API endpoints to remove all unnecessary data.
- Done optimization on both database level and website level, disabling or removing unnecessary plugins.
- The client was advised to increase the server resources to cope with the needed computing power.
My Role
- Generating, tweaking, and optimizing the WordPress API.
- Designing and setting up a separate database for the custom mobile API.
- Development of the custom mobile API, and admin panel with Laravel.
- Delivering a well-detailed API documentation for the mobile app development team.
