BusinessDay App Connector

A companion WordPress plugin for the BusinessDay mobile app. It does not touch or replace AeroPaywall's connector-plugin — the two run side by side, and this plugin never reads or writes AeroPaywall's data. It exists to solve one problem AeroPaywall's mobile endpoint doesn't try to solve: serving high-volume, non-personalized reads (content listings, app config) without a live database hit and a live entitlement check on every single request.

Why this exists

AeroPaywall's GET /wp-json/aeropaywall/v1/articles/{id} is, by design, always live — every call does a DB read plus (for non-subscribers) an outbound HTTP call to subscription-service's meter endpoint. That's correct for the one thing it does (deciding whether this specific reader can see this specific article, right now) — but it means naively calling it once per article, per list, per render would multiply load by (readers × screens × items-per-screen) for no reason, since a list screen doesn't need per-reader gating, just "is this premium" and a preview.

This plugin adds a second, purpose-built layer in front of that problem:

• Feed endpoints (/wp-json/businessday-app/v1/feed/*) return cached, non-personalized listings — the exact same JSON to every reader, rebuilt on a timer (3 min) or on post save, not per request. Each item's isPremium flag is read via one in-process call to AeroPaywall's own REST route per post (no network hop — see includes/class-bd-aeropaywall-bridge.php), but that only happens once per post per cache window, not once per reader per view.
• The actual reading gate stays untouched. When a reader opens a specific article, the app calls AeroPaywall's real endpoint directly, live, exactly as AeroPaywall intends — this plugin never proxies, caches, or duplicates that call. Load stays proportional to real article opens, which is the correct place for it to scale with usage.
• App config (/wp-json/businessday-app/v1/config) — banners, ad-slot config, and app-specific paywall copy, all editable from wp-admin, all cached the same way.

None of this requires a persistent object cache (Redis/Memcached) to be useful — every cache entry here is shared across all readers, not per-reader, so it doesn't grow with traffic the way a per-user cache would. If a CDN (Cloudflare, etc.) sits in front of the site, the Cache-Control: public, s-maxage=... headers on these endpoints let it absorb almost all of this traffic before it reaches WordPress at all.

Requirements

• WordPress with AeroPaywall's connector-plugin active (this plugin degrades gracefully — everything is treated as non-premium/open if AeroPaywall isn't active — but it's meant to run alongside it).
• PHP 8.0+.

Install

1. Copy this directory into wp-content/plugins/businessday-app-connector.
2. Activate it from Plugins in wp-admin.
3. A new BusinessDay App menu appears in the sidebar with three editorial pages (Banners, Ads, Paywall Copy) and a Cache page with a manual purge button.

Endpoints

Full article content and entitlement are not served here — the app calls AeroPaywall's own GET /wp-json/aeropaywall/v1/articles/{id} directly for that, per-article, on open.

Configuring the mobile app

Point the app's EXPO_PUBLIC_WP_BASE_URL env var at this WordPress site's base URL (the same site the AeroPaywall connector-plugin is installed on — both plugins' REST routes live under one host, just different namespaces: aeropaywall/v1 vs businessday-app/v1).