Nadia Odunayo & Scaling Rails for Millions of Users as a Solo Dev

In this episode of On Rails, Nadia Odunayo, founder and solo developer of The StoryGraph, joins us to share what it really takes to build and maintain a Rails application used by over four million readers across web and mobile.

We discuss lessons from launching a PWA, shifting to Turbo Native for cross-platform support, and navigating challenges like in-app purchases and data syncing between systems. Nadia also talks about the bold decision to move from Heroku to YugabyteDB to support growing workloads, and why she decided against hiring a team to manage it.

We also explore what it means to remain a solo developer by choice, the value of the Rails community, and why Ruby on Rails continues to be the framework that powers her entire business.

Platforms & Distribution

• The StoryGraph – Nadia’s solo-built reading and book tracking platform
• Apple App Store – The StoryGraph
• Google Play Store – StoryGraph
• Progressive Web Apps (MDN) – Alternative mobile delivery method initially explored

Tools, Libraries & Services

• Ruby on Rails – The primary framework powering The StoryGraph
• Turbo / Hotwire Native – Used to support mobile apps with shared Rails backend
• Devise (GitHub) – Authentication library for Rails
• Sidekiq – Background job processor
• Makara (GitHub) – Database proxy for master/replica load splitting
• Heroku – Former hosting platform for The StoryGraph
• YugabyteDB – Postgres-compatible distributed database chosen for scaling
• CTEs (Common Table Expressions) – Used for optimizing queries across distributed data
• Linear – Project management tool currently used by Nadia

Books

• Ruby Under a Microscope by Pat Shaughnessy – A deep dive into Ruby internals

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On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.

On Rails is brought to you by The Rails Foundation, and hosted by Robby Russell of Planet Argon, a consultancy that helps teams improve and modernize their existing Ruby on Rails apps.