Ritoria: Social Self-Publishing Platform with Creator Monetization

Client Request

Ritoria is a serialized-fiction platform for the Middle East: writers publish stories chapter by chapter, readers follow, comment and pay to unlock chapters, and the platform pays authors. The founder came to us with a design system and a vision of "for writers, by writers"; we built the whole product - reader and writer experiences, an in-app currency with three payment providers, a cover-design marketplace, forums and a back office - in English and Arabic.

Problem Solution

We delivered a Symfony web platform with 54 domain entities: stories, books and chapters with scheduling and per-chapter pricing; a Quill currency bought through Stripe, PayPal or Braintree and spent on chapters, gifts and donations; a paid stories program and promotions for authors; a cover-design marketplace with designer payouts; newsfeed, forums, messaging, notifications, polls and a six-type moderation queue; social login via Google, Facebook and Twitter; SEO pages, sitemaps and AdSense; an EasyAdmin back office with 38 sections. Light and dark themes, English and Arabic with RTL.

Final Result

The platform ran in production on AWS for two and a half years with real authors, real readers and real payouts - 292 commits and 120 database migrations of continuous evolution, from launch to scheduled chapters and slug-based SEO URLs. The project has since closed, and remains one of the most complete products we have built end to end: a marketplace, a social network and a payments system in one codebase.

Project Overview

Ritoria set out to be the place where writers in the Middle East could publish serialized fiction and get paid for it, and where readers could find "their next binge-worthy page-turner". The founder brought a complete Figma design system - a warm coral palette, Nunito Sans, gradient hero banners and a playful owl mascot - and asked us to turn it into a working product.

For readers we built explore and spotlight pages driven by editorial rows, story pages with chapter lists, a reading view with likes, polls and threaded comments, a personal bookshelf, followed works, a newsfeed and notifications. Mature content sits behind age verification, and every page exists in English and in right-to-left Arabic.

For writers we built the dashboard: works and series, reads and likes, earnings and donations by month, promotions and the paid stories program. Chapters are written in a rich-text editor, priced individually, scheduled for release and checked for plagiarism. A cover-design marketplace lets an author order a cover from a platform designer, pay for it and receive the file, with the designer paid out from the same wallet.

Money runs on Quills, the in-app currency. Readers buy Quill packages through Stripe, PayPal or Braintree, then spend them to unlock chapters, gift authors or donate; a transaction ledger, referral rewards and payouts close the loop. Around the product sits the community layer - forums with topics and tags, private conversations, reports and moderation - and an EasyAdmin back office where the team manages content rows, banners, genres, FAQ, SEO texts and every entity in the system.

Client: Ritoria, a UK self-publishing startup led by a Middle East based product owner
Industry: Publishing, creator economy, social platform
Scope: Full product development from design system to production - reader and writer apps, payments, marketplace, community, back office
Stack: PHP, Symfony 5, PostgreSQL, Doctrine, Twig, Webpack Encore, Bootstrap 5, EasyAdmin, Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, AWS (EC2, RDS, S3, SES)
Timeline: 2021 - 2023, 292 commits, 120 migrations
Languages: English and Arabic (RTL), light and dark themes

Key Features We Implemented

Chapter Reader

Clean reading view with author notes, likes, polls and threaded comments; mature chapters sit behind age verification.

Writer Studio

Rich-text chapter editor with per-chapter pricing, scheduled release, genres, mature tags and a plagiarism check before publishing.

Quills & Author Earnings

In-app currency bought via Stripe, PayPal or Braintree and spent on chapters, gifts and donations; authors see reads, likes and earnings by month.

Cover-Design Marketplace

Authors order a cover from platform designers - style, font, colouring, background - pay in Quills, and the designer is paid out automatically.

Community & Forums

Forums with topics and tags, newsfeed, private conversations, notifications, follows and a six-type report and moderation queue.

Bookshelf & Discovery

Explore and spotlight pages driven by editorial rows, personal bookshelf, followed works and genre browsing.

Dark Theme, English & Arabic

Every screen in light and dark, in English and right-to-left Arabic, with social login and SEO-friendly URLs.

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