Why Build Another One
There are dozens of "share to social" plugins on the WordPress directory. Almost all of them fall into the same trap: they post the same text to every network, format it badly, and break when an API contract changes. AutoShare started as an annoyed Saturday afternoon and turned into a real plugin.
Approach
Three principles drove the design:
- Per-network templates. Twitter gets a different format from LinkedIn. The plugin ships sensible defaults and exposes a template editor.
- A real queue. Schedule posts ahead, respect rate limits, retry on transient failures, and surface meaningful errors instead of swallowing them.
- OAuth without the headache. Setting up developer apps on three networks is the worst part of any social plugin. AutoShare uses a proxy auth flow so users authorize once with a single click.
The Stack
PHP 8.1
WordPress Plugin API
OAuth 2.0
WP-Cron
Vue 3 (admin UI)
REST API
Composer
What I Built
- A Vue 3 admin panel inside WordPress for managing templates, schedules, and connected accounts.
- A queue worker that runs through WP-Cron with a Redis-backed fallback for high-traffic sites.
- Per-network formatters with handlebars-style templates and live previews.
- Detailed logging with retry diagnostics on failures.
- Multisite support and per-site account isolation.