Tech in Asia, initially established as Penn Olson, transitioned from using WordPress as its primary platform to adopting a custom-built solution leveraging the WordPress REST API for better scalability and functionality. The shift included significant milestones such as the implementation of user-generated content and custom design updates, culminating in a service-oriented architecture with distinct APIs for different functions. Future plans involve integrating a modern editorial CMS and enhancing front-end user experience using React.

1. Moving Beyond WordPress
at Tech in Asia
- Lester & Melvin
T

2. Tech in Asia (YC W2015) is a media, events, and jobs platform
for Asia’s tech communities.
We are a team of 100 across 12 cities in the region
spanning editorial, product, community and events functions.
About Tech in Asia

3. History of WordPress at Tech in
Asia
● Tech in Asia is 5 years old
● Back then Tech in Asia was known as Penn Olson
● Been on WordPress since the start
● Using a customized WordPress theme (not using any theme
framework)
● Most features are custom coded plugins. Third-party plugins just
doesn’t scale well and didn’t meet our requirements.

4. Walking Down Memory Lane
18th August 2014
Product Team Formed

5. Walking Down Memory Lane
27th October 2014
List View

6. Walking Down Memory Lane
17th October 2014
Trending Articles / Member System

7. Walking Down Memory Lane
20th April 2015
Added Facebook & Google Login

8. Walking Down Memory Lane
28th May 2015
User Generated Content / Upvoting
Articles

9. Walking Down Memory Lane
17th August 2015
Whiter, Flatter, Sleeker Design

10. Walking Down Memory Lane
16th December 2015
Major Redesign Using WP API And React

11. Walking Down Memory Lane
31st May 2016
Jobs

12. WordPress as our Back-end
WordPress as our Back-end

13. WordPress API
● WordPress REST API infrastructure was in WordPress core since
WordPress 4.4 (8th December 2015)
● Prior to WordPress 4.4, we have been testing WordPress REST
API Plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/rest-api/) in preparation
for the release
● We are not using the default namespace provided by the plugin
○ Eg: /wp-json/wp/v2/posts
● We are using our own namespace with our own payload format
○ Eg: /wp-json/techinasia/2.0/posts

14. Namespace / Version / Payload Format
● Namespace /techinasia/
○ Avoid conflicts
○ Our own identity
● Version /2.0/
○ We used “2.0” instead of “v2”
■ Float for easy validation
● Payload
○ Only return what the client needs
○ Standardized payload format and pagination format
○ Eg: https://www.techinasia.com/wp-json/techinasia/2.0/posts

15. The Move To WordPress API
● Unified API
○ Same API for web, iOS and Android
● Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
○ Laravel used for Startups & Jobs database
○ WordPress used for Editorial & Community content
● Separation of concerns
○ FE engineers need not touch API and vice versa
● Hiring
○ Easier to hire a JS guy to implement an API then a
WordPress engineer

16. Features
● Can’t use most of the WordPress plugins
○ Custom coded feature as a plugin
■ Comment upvoting, notification, registration, login
● 3rd party plugins mainly backend related
○ AMP, Google XML Sitemaps, Instant Articles, Redis Object
Cache, TinyMCE Advanced

17. Services
● Impossible to built everything ourselves
● Search in WordPress is horrible
○ Google Custom Search
○ https://developers.google.com/custom-search/
● Jetpack Notification is a closed service
○ Stream
○ https://getstream.io/
● Jetpack Proton doesn’t work for our use-case
○ Kraken
○ https://kraken.io/

18. Authentication, Authorization and
Session
● Deal with Authentication, Authorization and Session management
● Authentication / Authorization
○ WordPress
○ wp_signon() and user_can() function
● Session
○ Data stored in Redis
○ Overwrite WP session data with “determine_current_user”
filter
○ Session information is set in cookie in the browser
○ Cookie sent along with API request (web) or via Authorization

19. Rate Limiting / Caching
● API is open, prone to abuse
● Rate limiting GET / PUT / POST requests
○ Discourage spamming
○ Return 429 Too Many Requests when that happens
● Caching
○ Most of our users are “logged out” which makes caching easy
○ Most GET requests should be cached
○ Even a 1-minute cache would help for a heavy traffic site like
TIA

20. Future?
● Editorial CMS like Automattic’s Calypso
○ Bypass WP-Admin
○ Desktop app using React with Electron
○ Customized to our editor’s workflow
○ More APIs needed

21. React as our Front-end
React as our Front-end

22. Choosing a front-end framework
● 2015 was an interesting year for front-end development.
○ React’s popularity exploded.
○ Angular 2 was being announced; not fully backward
compatible with Angular 1.
○ ES2015 - the most significant upgrade to JavaScript was
finalised in June.

23. React’s Virtual DOM
Credits: http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2013/diff/

24. WordPress Theme Template

25. React’s JSX Syntax

26. React Ops Stuff
● Babel (https://babeljs.io/)
○ Transpile JSX and ES2015+ code to ES5
● webpack (http://webpack.github.io/)
○ Module bundler (with a lot of magic)
○ Code splitting
○ Hot reloading

27. Flux Architecture
● An architecture to manage data between different views
● Data travels in a unidirectional flow
● Many variants of Flux - Redux is currently the most popular
Credits: https://code-cartoons.com/a-cartoon-guide-to-flux-6157355ab207

28. Routing with React
● Routing separate from WordPress
● Using react-router (https://github.com/reactjs/react-router)
● How do we handle pretty permalinks?
(https://www.techinasia.com/%postname%)
○ Custom WP REST API that takes in the slug
○ Call the API that returns the post object
○ Get post type from the object
○ Render the correct component accordingly (page / post)

29. Search Engine Optimization
● SPA + SEO don’t really go well together
○ Not all search engines can “understand” JavaScript
● One trick: take a “screenshot” of the page
○ Service: Prerender.io (https://prerender.io/)
● Dynamically adding meta tags into the document:
○ react-helmet (https://github.com/nfl/react-helmet)

30. Tips on Starting out React
● Cover the basics without the ops part:
https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting-started.html
● Start with a good boilerplate (react-boilerplate)
● Learn JavaScript (ES2015+)
○ Challenge: Functional Programming with JS
Free book: https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix
● Redux: https://egghead.io/courses/getting-started-with-redux

31. Any Questions?
The End