Konstantin Kovshenin
@kovshenin · Code Wrangler, Automattic
Howdy! I'm the creator of Foller.me. Feel free to ask me any questions!
3sharetweet・
Sérgio Santos
@s3rgiosan · Web Engineer
Hi @kovshenin, I'm also a WordPress developer and I'm interested in understanding the use of WordPress to build this product. Can you give more details about how, or what for, you used WordPress? Thanks in advance.
Congrats! Really nice tool!
1sharetweet・
Konstantin Kovshenin
@kovshenin · Code Wrangler, Automattic
@s3rgiosan Foller.me wasn't always on WordPress. The initial version was built in Python on Google App Engine ( https://github.com/kovshenin/fol... ), then moved to Django + MySQL, then I rewrote it in bare PHP and MySQL and hosted it on AWS, and only a couple years later I made it into a WordPress theme + plugin.
The main reason was to show people that WordPress can be used for many things that are not "just a blog." This was quite a while ago and there are many more great examples now.
In terms of how, it's pretty simple. It's a plugin + theme combo (could have been just a theme) with some functions for routing requests, performing calls to the Twitter API, storing and displaying the data. The data is stored/cached in wp_posts and wp_postmeta. These tend to get big pretty quickly so I have a WP_Cron task deleting very old entries a few times every day. I use tags (terms) to be able to filter by language, as well as get certain stats.
If you have any more specific questions, will be happy to share!
2sharetweet・
Sérgio Santos
@s3rgiosan · Web Engineer
@kovshenin Much appreciated for your response 👊
I'm always trying to find examples that show people that WordPress can be used for many things that are not "just a blog".
Thank you very much.
2sharetweet・