Example Project : YogaKula.com

The client, YogaKula.com, approached us with their existing site and their needs

1) An easy to maintain site filled with information that frequently changes such as a Calendar of Events.   They want a great looking design that allows the visitors easy access to the content.

2) An online store solution that can manage a large catalog of products, both physical and digital (downloadable).    They also want integration with other online tools such as automatic UPS shipping calculation.

3) A graphical HTML email list that has supports thousands of users, automatic subscribe and unsubscribe and easy management of  mailing list groups.

Solution to Need #1:

We chose WordPress as the Open Source Content Management System platform to drive the site.   WordPress is easy to use for the multiple members of the YogaKula staff who will be managing the content.   It also has some great tools for managing an events calendar.   I wrote some custom code to the Events Calendar management system to allow for an extra heading title and an image to be associated with each event.

We also installed several Social Marketing plug-ins to integrate content with Facebook, Twitter and AddThis making the YogaKula site as open ended to the World Wide Web as we can and bringing in as much traffic through honest social advertising.

The design was largely borrowed from other sites.   The client browsed around and found several sites that they liked very much and we adapted the design from there.

Solution to Need #2:

ZenCart is our favorite open source  e-commerce platform.   It allows for easy setup, has hundreds of tools and is the result of years and years of online store owners optimizing the process.  It’s easy to setup a full catalog ranging from CDs to DVDs to Books to Yoga products to digital downloads. We setup a YogaKula UPS account to allow for automatic UPS shipping.

ZenCart is reasonably easy to understand from the code perspective too and allows for total re-writing of code and design to allow complete seamless integration into the site.

Solution to Need #3:

I researched online email list management solutions and found that all the pay by month services are a rip-off unless you are doing sophisticated ad-tracking and google analytics based research onto your email campaigns and require all sorts of trackback data.

Most of our customers just want an email list that looks nice, is easy to use, and allows for the subscribers to manage their subscription themselves.   Oh, and no monthly fee!

So the best solution I found was to install the Joomla engine just for the purpose of taking advantage of the Joomla Mailing List Manager component.   It’s a one-time purchase fee of $50 and it does everything the client wants.   I had 1 client who wants trackback info and I was able to re-write some of the code to allow for that.

UPDATE : Keeping abreast of new technology is imperative!   After releasing the site I disovered WP-Ecommerce, a great package that uses WordPress to manage online product catalogs, orders and customers.  As much as I like Zen Cart, it’s better to have everything in one place, so we swapped out ZenCart in favor of WP-Ecommerce.    WP-Ecommerce is great, if you get the full version, easy WordPress admin interface and support for downloadable products.

The Down-low:

BePresents.com wants to meet with you, get a list of verything you want to represent on the web, teach you of new technology that can expand this presence and come up with the best solution to meet your needs, save your money and create a great looking site.

The Follow Up:

A very important part of the BePresents.com business philosophy is that we are here for the customer.   We want all our customers  to know what it is they bought and how to use it.   We want to build a relationship that will last.

For YogaKula.com I spent hours teaching them how to use their new WordPress system.   I often do touch-ups or assistance for free if it’s less than 5 minutes of my time.

I created a YogaKula “How to” WordPress PDF Document that you may find interesting.

I treat their site as if it is my own.