Custom App Spotlight: Vinitial

Let’s say you play soccer on the weekends, and last Sunday you tweaked your back for the 3rd time. You visit your physical therapist to get checked out, because you figure you need more than ice and advil this time.

He fixes you up, scolds you for slide tackling at your age, and sends you on your way with a list of exercises.

You wake up the next day and start on your prescribed workout, and all of a sudden get a shooting pain up your spine. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just text your doctor and get an immediate response, instead of scheduling another appointment and waiting in pain for 2 days?

That’s exactly what Vinitial allows you to do.

Vinitial is a messaging app for healthcare providers and their clients to be able to communicate outside the appointment office.

Providers can now keep better tabs on their patients, and patients can have faster access to their providers, all without using up your cell phone texting limits. It’s a win win!

Of course, we are developers, so we also get really excited about how the app is built.

Below you can learn about the unique tools we used to make the app, and why that matters for both developers and clients.

Why using WordPress as a backend for mobile apps is awesome

Vinitial uses WordPress as a back end for it’s app, which is awesome in so many ways. It saves time and money, it works great, and clients love it.

WordPress basically becomes a UI for handling the data in the app, a place where the client can go and control what is happening visually. In Vinitial’s case, this is great for managing users, registration, roles, and more.

If you didn’t use WordPress, you would still have to use some other framework, or build a custom UI for your client to manage users and app data. Using WordPress allows the app to be built in less time, and for less money.

Vinitial integrates with BuddyPress, which provides a lot of the functionality needed in an app like this. For example, you can login to WordPress and see a registered users profile, and even change their role (to provider for example).

This app was built using a hybrid mobile app framework, the WordPress JSON REST API, and Phonegap. We added custom BuddyPress endpoints to the REST API to add friend requests, private messaging, and more in this app.

The app is lightning fast, can be viewed while offline, integrates push notifications, login authentication, and more.

We had a great time building Vinitial, and working with WordPress in new and exciting ways.