Applause Button WordPress Plugin

[bhadaway]

Hi Everyone,

I've created a WordPress plugin for the Applause Button:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/applause/

I read previously that someone else in the community also created a plugin for it, but hid some malware inside of it that ended with it being removed from the WordPress plugin repo. Rest-assured, I won't be pulling any BS like that.

I genuinely like and appreciate the project and want to make it more easily accessible to WordPress users.

This is brand-new, version 0.1 right out of the oven, so obviously there's more work to do. Let me know what you think, what sucks, what should be added or removed. If there's enough demand for it, I'll add an actual settings page so that certain things can be set universally, but as always with all my projects, I'm trying to keep it as simple and clean as possible. A settings page feels a bit overkill.

Bonus: I've created an alternate version that replaces the applause icon with a heart icon and trims down the code a bit for a Twitter style like button. That'll be available sometime this week and may be used as a reference to easily swap out the default icon for your own.

Thanks!

[ColinEberhardt]

That's fantastic, thanks for the heads-up.

One small request, can you please add a link to the OpenCollective page for this project? The server costs are funded by donation, I'd hope the Wordpress users would also contribute :-)

https://opencollective.com/applause-button

[bhadaway]

Currently, I'm linking to the entire project page (https://applause-button.com/), but sure, I don't see why I couldn't add a link to https://opencollective.com/applause-button as well.

Originally, I thought about just capturing and storing "likes" locally for a project, but then I realized that that's kind of an empty gesture, and those stats would disappear into the abyss. Also, I don't love the idea of using something like Facebook, which involves a closed source platform and tracking.

That's when I realized that the solution needed to be open source and the stats needed to be centralized somewhere so that they're available to all and live on, regardless of where the button and count are embedded.

I searched far and wide to find the best thing, and what you created is it. So, I intend on investing more time into the project and also, I'll make a donation the next time I have some money. I definitely want the project to live on indefinitely.

You're paying about $40/month for AWS? I assume it automatically scales with demand? How many sites do you think you can support before you'll see a significant increase in cost?

[ColinEberhardt]

You're paying about $40/month for AWS? I assume it automatically scales with demand? How many sites do you think you can support before you'll see a significant increase in cost?

Yes, the whole back end is elastic, the more people use it, the more it scales. I have various alerts that occur if i get a sudden (and costly) spike.

Some current stats:

• pages using the applause button - 19,984
• the number of 'get clap count' requests per day ~100,000
• the number of 'update clap count' requests per day ~500

Not bad for $40/month!

I agree, having them centralised in a more open way than they are now would be a better solution. The problem is, with this amount of traffic and data, you're unlikely to find something free that can openly host it.

Perhaps I should periodically upload a data dump to GitHub?

I do worry that if this gets seriously popular, i.e. any top-100 site starts using it, the costs will seriously rack up!

[bhadaway]

Perhaps I should periodically upload a data dump to GitHub?

Yes, that's what I was thinking. At least once a day (hourly might be way too taxing for the current setup). I'm sure this can be automated.

I do worry that if this gets seriously popular, i.e. any top-100 site starts using it, the costs will seriously rack up!

I think it's a very real possibility, especially as people become more and more angry with Facebook, who is currently the big dog when it comes to a universal like button that can be embedded anywhere. https://www.digitalocean.com/ scales in $5 blocks of resources and might be more affordable than AWS.

[bhadaway]

Never mind on the whole decentralizing/public data dump idea. I really didn't fully think that through yet: #86.

[bhadaway]

Updates:

• The Love Button plugin is now live: https://wordpress.org/plugins/love-button/
• On both plugins, I added a donation link for the project: https://opencollective.com/applause-button/donate
• I, myself, am now signed up to make a monthly donation
• I think I'll publish a blog post soon about why I think this is a great project and a good replacement for the Facebook Like button

I'm all in! 🤍

[ColinEberhardt]

That's awesome - thanks @bhadaway

[bhadaway]

https://techpost.io/the-facebook-like-button-replacement-is-here/

[ColinEberhardt]

Very nice - thanks @bhadaway :-)