Vivanista – Living Well. Doing Good.
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Vivanista.com was a redesign project. Their first website was a custom-built application using Ruby on Rails and I opted to move them to BuddyPress as well as implement at redesign.
There are still some minor fixes and changes being made to the website but here are the features:
1. Classifieds (powered by deep integration with BBPress)
Uses BBPress Forums and Topics in a manner similar to Craigslist
2. Boutiques (e-commerce on WordPress MU)
Renamed ‘Blogs’ in the language definition to become ‘Boutiques’ which allow users to create online stores (similar to Etsy) and sell boutique products to other members. Boutique creation is not available to any member and must contact Vivanista to sign up.
3. Facebook Connect via plugin
A good amount of the site’s audience is already on Facebook so this plugin was essential to making signup as painless as possible.
4. Clubs via BuddyPress Groups
More language/label changes
5. Invite Friends
Existing plugins for inviting friends are extremely lacking. Created my own which is still in its infancy but will be developed further and released as a plugin.
6. Content Management
I tried to make the management of content via pages and posts as easy as possible for the content creators and Vivanista staff. I kept custom fields to a minimum and instead of trying to mess with complex thumbnail generation, I’ve opted for simple CSS styling of the first image in a post to display thumbnails.
Some more basic info: it is still running on a pre-1.1+ theme so it will need to be changed to work with the new parent-child theme framework.
I’m writing up some case studies based on this project and the experience of working with WordPress MU, BuddyPress and all of the integrations that were necessary to provide the client with the features they desired. There are quite a few pain points I’ve encountered and either developed solutions for or devised workarounds that I will detail further. I will post a link to the case studies once they are complete.
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