AppPresser: Pushing the Boundaries of WordPress

There are still people out there that think WordPress is just a blogging platform.

Someone who understands the fallacy in this statement is Scott Bolinger, the Co-Founder of AppPresser. AppPresser is a plugin framework with a set of tools that gives you the power to create native iOS and/or Android apps using WordPress.

Scott agreed to chat with me recently. He explained how AppPresser is helping to bring WordPress eCommerce sites and social networks onto mobile devices, and shared his thoughts on the exciting future ahead for WordPress.

Building WordPress eCommerce Apps

Scott and his AppPresser colleagues decided to focus on eCommerce as the first use-case for AppPresser. eCommerce sites can use the AppPresser framework to create an app where their customers can buy products, quickly and affordably.

Scott explained, it’s much more difficult to build an eCommerce app any other way:

First of all, you wouldn’t be able to use WooCommerce or any other eCommerce plugin. You’d have to integrate with some type of other app, which would be difficult.

And then you would have two separate things to manage, and it would be more expensive and more complicated. So with AppPresser, you just use everything that’s already on your site, you just throw into an app and it’s done.

In good news for WP Engine’s eCommerce customers, AppPresser found that an eCommerce app, called Wakami, experienced a significant performance improvement when migrated over to WP Engine.

One of the newer [eCommerce apps] we’ve released, it’s called Wakami, is hosted on WP Engine.

We noticed a very significant performance improvement between when that app was hosted on WP Engine, and when the exact same app is hosted on shared hosting.

Scott puts that down to our superior caching technology:

So the caching and everything on WP Engine definitely makes a significant performance advantage, which I think is really important. Especially for an app, like if you’re [running the app] over 3G.

Building Social Network Apps in WordPress

The potential applications of AppPresser go much wider than eCommerce, and now the AppPresser team have set their sights on BuddyPress. Scott explained:

I think BuddyPress is going to be huge because there really is no good way to affordably, and quickly, make a social networking app right now. So using AppPresser and BuddyPress is going to fill that gap.

An AppPresser/BuddyPress integration would provide some pretty cool opportunities. For example you could create a special social networking app for a specific event, like a WordCamp for example.

We’re going to be able to very quickly make an app where people can talk to each other, and post photos and things like that. So you can sort of make a little mini social networking app, very quickly and affordably using WordPress.

The Future of WordPress

Moving beyond AppPresser to the WordPress community more generally, Scott is optimistic about the future.

I think a lot of the companies that kind of started as small WordPress agencies or WordPress products are going to grow to where their revenues and their amount of employees are going to be as big as a lot of the non-WordPress companies out there.

Scott noted that there are still a lot of people out there who don’t know what WordPress can do—people who think that WordPress is just a blogging platform, or that WordPress is insecure (which it’s not).

I think that the rest of the world, you know that 80% who’s not using WordPress, once they realize what WordPress is doing and how awesome it is…

I still think there is a tonne of growth potential for WordPress. So I don’t see its growth stopping anytime soon.

I could definitely see it being 30-40-50% of the web over the next 5-10 years.

We agree with Scott—the future of WordPress is truly exciting.

We can’t wait to see more innovative examples that push the current boundaries of WordPress. The possibilities are endless.

What’s your favorite example of a WordPress business pushing the boundaries?