Made In Oman Business Directory

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.
Oman Made Marketing
Web, Mobile, API, Admin Panel, WordPress

Tech Wrap-up

Backend
  • Built with PHP/Laravel.
  • Handles all the API requests.
  • Admin panel to manage all mobile API data such as sponsors, sliders, featured listings, featured categories, packages, services, notifications, visitor messages, and mobile app settings.
  • Admin dashboard graphs, and charts visualizing data metrics.
Frontend
  • Vanilla JavaScript, and JQuery.
  • Mainly to handle ajax requests to the server and managing the Data-Tables.
  • Custom Google Maps API integration.