Case study
Tamaras Wunder
A website for handmade crochet work became an umbrella brand with two areas — while trading continued, with existing customers, and without losing a single order.
- Type
- Client project
- Areas
- Web · UI/UX · Hosting
- Scope
- New brand, second business area, guestbook, admin
- Notable
- Rebuilt while the shop stayed open
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01
Where it startedThe existing site carried a name that only covered part of the business: crochet work. A second area had grown alongside it that didn't appear anywhere — different customers, different expectations, a different process. On top of that, a shop with real orders was running that absolutely could not go down.
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02
The briefAn umbrella brand with room for both areas, without either looking like an afterthought. Plus a new look, a way for customers to show their results, and an admin area the owner can use without technical knowledge.
- Two equal areas under one roof
- The existing shop stays, including orders and customer accounts
- A guestbook with photos — moderated, nothing appears unchecked
- All of it usable without a developer
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03
How it was builtFirst a design system that carries both areas, then the new pages, then the guestbook with moderation and photo processing. The shop wasn't rebuilt — it was brought into line with the new look. It worked and it earned money, and you don't rebuild that on principle. Before the switch, the whole site ran in a local copy with its own test database.
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04
Going liveLaunch and domain change ran through a script that does a dry run first and shows exactly what would change. Afterwards everything was checked from the outside — every redirect against its full destination, not just its status code. That is precisely what the one post-launch fault came down to.
Architecture
How it's built.
Deliberately plain: a classic web server, no dependency on a site builder, no monthly fee for technology you can't move away from.
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01
HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Pages
The public pages sit on the server as finished files. Nothing has to be computed on each visit — that's fast, and it doesn't fall over when traffic spikes.
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02
Custom CSS foundation
Design system
Colours, type, spacing and components in one place. That way the shop, customer accounts and admin area follow automatically whenever the brand changes.
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03
PHP
Interfaces
For everything that needs data: orders, guestbook submissions, the contact form, moderation. Each one checks where a request came from and how often before accepting anything.
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04
MySQL
Data
Products, orders, customer accounts and guestbook entries. Photos sit alongside as files, not inside the database — that was a deliberate correction.
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05
Payment provider
Payment
Handled through an established payment provider. Payment details never pass through the site itself and are never stored there.
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06
Custom interface
Admin
A dedicated area for the owner: manage products, see orders, approve or reject guestbook entries. Built for somebody who doesn't want to learn any technology.
Decisions
Why it's built this way.
Four decisions that made the difference.
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01
The shop was not rebuilt
It worked, and real orders and customer accounts depended on it. Instead of a rebuild it got the new look fitted over it. A rebuild would have looked better and put live orders at genuine risk — not worth it.
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02
The guestbook is moderated
Photos and text from customers only appear once approved. An open guestbook on the internet gets abused sooner or later, and then it sits there under the owner's name. Approval costs her a few seconds per entry and removes the risk entirely.
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03
Images belong on the server as files
Product images originally lived in the database. That grew the data a hundredfold and made saving in the admin area noticeably slow. Moving to files fixed both. A decision that feels convenient early and bites later — a good reason to make it early.
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04
Every change starts as a dry run
The server isn't version controlled; a mistake there can't be undone with one command. So the tool shows what it would change first, and only uploads on an explicit instruction. Plus a check of the redirects beforehand.
What came out of it
The site is live, both areas have their place, and the owner maintains her own content.
- Two business areas under one brand, neither looking like an afterthought
- The shop kept trading throughout the rebuild
- Customers show their results — moderated, without the risk
- Products, orders and entries are maintained by the owner without us
- Domain change with no lost addresses: the old one redirects permanently
What we take from it
After launch, one page redirected to a broken address — the smoke test had only checked that a redirect happened, not where it went. Since then we check the full destination of every redirect. A test that only checks the obvious gives you confidence you haven't earned.
Contact
A website that needs to grow with you?
New area, new brand, or a rebuild while you keep trading — describe it and we'll tell you honestly what makes sense.