Overview
Is it possible to learn to play the violin in an online course? Oh yes, you can. Professional violinist Beth Blackerby has developed an online course specifically for adults that has been running with great success for 15 years. The platform has 1300 active subscribers. After such a long time, a redesign was due. The first step was to securely transfer the user and payment data of all subscribers to WordPress.

Background

The technical basis of the website was a custom-programmed PHP framework that was more than a decade old. The framework had recurring security and technical problems, and outages were becoming more frequent. The client was increasingly concerned that the website would eventually stop working and wanted a modern, secure system.

The website was cumbersome to use. Even small adjustments were very time-consuming.

Several unsuccessful attempts had already been made to move the website to another system. All attempts failed due to the transfer of data. Although the information (courses, payment data and subscriber profiles) was stored in a database, the structure of the data was not compatible with other systems. 

The website’s business model is selling subscriptions. This means that an amount is debited from the subscriber’s account every month. A loss of user and payment data would have been the end of the business. It should also be possible to transfer the content. Entering over 800 lessons by hand was not an option.

Extensions

The courses are sold in a subscription model. LearnDash offers a payment function, but you can only sell individual courses via a one-off payment. If you want to use a subscription model, you need to add further extensions to LearnDash.

Paid Memberships Pro
manages subscribers with their different subscription levels. There are a handful of options with different conditions, partly due to violinlab.com going back more than a decade.  

PaidMemberships Pro manages the different types of mostly recurring payments and the implementation of a payment provider. It also ensures that subscribers get access to the lessons and options according to their subscription level.

Private Sessions
Using this add-on, students are able to get in touch with their teacher privately.

Community
One big part of ViolinLab is the community. Here, subscribers get to meet, exchange information, and ask questions. Having a place to get involved on a personal basis helps to keep subscribers “on board” in the long term.

Dokumentation and coordination

All steps and decisions were recorded in a documentation, accessible to both the team and the client. We used Trello for coordination.

Conclusion

The website now has a stable, modern code base. The website and data are secure against attacks and losses. We were able to rebuild most features of the old platform.
User navigation is now more intuitive and the paths are shorter. Our client is able to quickly edit and add content, new courses and subscribers herself.

“I wanted to take a moment now that the dust has settled to express my gratitude for your incredible professionalism and competency. I honestly didn’t believe I would be able to rebuild Violin Lab after previous failed attempts. You instilled confidence from the very beginning. You delivered on every aspect, and I hope our collaboration spans the life of my site.“
Beth Blackerby, violinlab.com

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Summary
The small publishing house Viereck-Verlag owns an online shop for all things Origami. But the shop software was outdated and wasn’t maintained any longer. The design and usability did not meet modern standards anymore. It was time for a major overhaul.

Background

The Viereck-Verlag publishing house located in Freising (near Munich)  publishes books on Origami and exhibition catalogues. For more than three decades has the publishing house been involved with making Origami better known in Germany. The shop started as a mere side project, in order to be able to offer access to the beautiful papers and books available world-wide.
Today, the shop offers an extensive and well-chosen selection of Origami paper and most beautiful books on Origami.

The shop software was outdated and was not maintained any longer. It was not possible to use a modern version of PHP, which also meant that it was impossible to secure the URL via an SSL certificate. The design did not allow for responsiveness – it was not really fit for the use on tablets or smartphones.

• Invoice according to shop language (German/English)
• Stock management
• Customer accounts
• Discounts for different groups of customers, e.g. discounts on specific products for specific customers or general discounts for certain groups of customers, for instance book stores
• Different payment options:
  • Instant transfer
  • Credit cards
  • Paypal
  • Invoice
• Shipping costs
  • Calculate shipping costs according to weight and destination
  • Print shipping labels directly when editing the order
  • For special formats: force postage to be calculated separately for the products concerned.
• VAT
  • EU-VAT: incorporate the EU VAT-ID if available
  • Reduced and regular VAT for different types of products
  • Selling tax-free for customers outside the EU
• Newsletter

Testing, testing, testing

When there are so many elements and functions that need to work together, it’s crucial to test thoroughly, fix bugs, test again. Especially when it comes to processing payments, we needed to ensure that the connection to platforms like PayPal and sofort.com works faultlessly. For PayPal, we did extensive tests using the PayPal sandbox. It also helps to test WooCommerce functionality, e.g. to see whether all the emails are sent correctly and if cancellation and refunding works.

After the Launch

Testing will always be an important part in the life of an online store. Since WordPress core and plugins undergo constant changes, it can always happen that things go wrong. Sometimes, a new version of plugin A is no longer compatible with plugin B. This certainly affects all types of WordPress websites, but most websites are not quite as dependent on everything working smoothly as an online store.

Over the years, we also had a handful of plugins that are no longer supported. In this case, we need to find a plugin to replace the old one, in order to make sure that all software is up-to-date.

Usually, we test all updates in a staging environment, that is in an exact copy of our website, preferably in the exact same server space. Additionally, we conduct automated daily (or more) backups, an absolute necessity for any online shop.

Conclusion

The Viereck-Verlag online store now features a modern look & feel and is easy to use across all screen sizes. The user interface and the order process are a lot more clear now. Even for our client, the owner of the shop, handling orders has become a lot more comfortable. Many processes can be automated and it is easier now, to keep track of stock levels and sales.

“It’s almost impossible to compare our old website with the new one. The order process for customers now feels like a “normal” online store. For us, it has become easier [… to handle things], even though we need to learn a lot now. The presentation of our products is better now, and we have more options to arrange and change elements on the front page now.”

Silke Schröder, Viereck-Verlag

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