I built a social gaming platform in 11 months as a self-taught developer 🧵

Hey Product Hunt! 👋

I'm Ric from France, Paris, creator of RetroGems. 11 months ago, I launched this as a side project after learning WordPress for 7 months.

Today it's a full social gaming platform with features I've never seen elsewhere:

🎮 What makes RetroGems different:

• 313 game characters database with community ratings (UNIQUE)

• 324 OST tracks database with composer search (UNIQUE)

• Private messaging + real-time chat (coded from scratch)

• Follow system with email notifications for new posts

• Gamification (XP/Levels)

• 10-tab advanced search (games, articles, characters, OSTs, consoles, licenses, forum, members)

📊 Current stats:

• 3,980 indexed items (1,869 games, 313 characters, 324 OSTs, 769 articles)

• 559 registered members

• 0.16s LCP (top 0.1% web performance)

• Google News indexed

🛠️ Tech stack:

• WordPress as framework (NOT a typical WP site!)

• 0 page builders (Elementor, Divi, etc.)

• Custom PHP/JavaScript

• All social features coded from scratch (no BuddyPress, bbPress, etc.)

Solo founder, self-taught, bootstrapped.

Happy to answer any questions! 🚀

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