Security

Discover how Serfe ensures robust website security with comprehensive solutions, including security audits, vulnerability fixes, monitoring, and team training. Protect your business from cyber threats today!

We had the privilege of working on an exciting project in 2021, creating a WordPress website with WooCommerce for our client. They specialize on selling signature garments, including shirts and t-shirts known for their use of premium materials like Suvin, Zimbabwe, and Khadi cotton. In this case, we focused on the USA online store, in coordination with New York and San Francisco stores. Our team implemented a wide range of tasks and optimizations to ensure a seamless and efficient e-commerce experience.

Development phase

Throughout the project, we focused on enhancing various aspects of the website. We created a comprehensive PO (Purchase Order) list page to streamline order management. Additionally, we performed a thorough clean-up of uninstalled plugins to optimize the website's performance and security. We developed functionality for creating and receiving purchase orders, including a discrepancy tab to address any order-related issues promptly.

Efficient inventory management was a crucial aspect of the project, and we successfully implemented store transfer functionality. This allowed our client to seamlessly move their products between different stores as needed. We also ensured that purchase orders and store transfers could be easily canceled and deleted, providing flexibility and control over the inventory management process.

To improve the user experience, we developed a mobile-friendly dropdown filter, enabling customers to navigate the website effortlessly on their mobile devices. The migration to GoDaddy hosting further enhanced the website's reliability and performance. We meticulously configured the simple sales tax settings to ensure accurate tax calculations for each transaction.

Performance and security

Image optimization played a vital role in improving loading times and visual appeal. By optimizing the images, we ensured that customers could enjoy a visually immersive experience while browsing the website. Seamless and secure payment processing was achieved by integrating PayPal as a trusted payment gateway. The integration of the new taxonomy system allowed for an improved color filtering experience, enabling customers to find their desired products more efficiently.

Our attention to detail extended to various areas, such as verifying the functionality of ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) for gender and style fields, addressing issues related to Yasuminate and Look book features, and adjusting the number of items displayed per page in product listings. We also implemented up-sell product recommendations to encourage additional purchases and created a dedicated Look Books page to showcase our client's signature garments.

Design refinements were made throughout the website, including the removal of bold text from the product footer composition. To improve the visual representation of product variations, we added pictures to customer emails. Seamless account access was provided through the implementation of customer login functionality, tailored to offer a limited set of options.

The website's performance and security were monitored closely, with the installation and configuration of Google Analytics to provide comprehensive insights into user behavior and website performance. We added a WishList count to the icon for easy tracking of saved items and swiftly addressed any post-launch issues through ongoing monitoring and quick fixes.

Lastly, we implemented a dedicated view for sold-out products, informing customers of stock availability, and made accessibility improvements using the One Click Accessibility plugin to ensure a user-friendly experience for all visitors, expanding website's audience and traffic. Our team worked closely with the client to finish ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance.

Ongoing maintenance

Throughout the project, we collaborated closely with our client to deliver a robust, user-friendly website that reflects their brand identity and provides a seamless online shopping experience. We are proud of the successful completion of this project and the positive impact it has had on our client's business. Ongoing updates were essential to keep the website secure and compatible, so we regularly updated plugins and the WordPress core.

Invent Like An Owner podcast, is a website where Dave Schappell, who worked at Amazon, shares interviews he conducted with different people who worked and helped build Amazon.com and part of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

On the site, users can listen to podcasts and consume the content that the client publishes every week. It also allows you to subscribe to the newsletter and channels where the interviews are published (Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcasts)

Initial phase

After receiving the client's idea, we set about defining the structure, pages and main sections of the site. The client requested a simple and clean (minimalist) design that goes with the theme of the idea. We opted to use Wordpress, which is a very simple and friendly content manager. In this phase we help the client to choose a theme and select the hosting to host the site. We also confirm the list of plugins to use.

Together with the client, we decided to acquire the Monochrome Pro theme build under the Genesis Framework, since this integrates very well with the new Wordpres's Gutenberg editor.

Development phase

We begin with the implementation of basic Wordpress and the installation of the chosen theme. In the first stage of development we complete the configuration of the theme, confirm with the client the color scheme to be used and create the structure of the site with the main pages. In order to cover all the needs, a child theme was created to add some customizations to the site that require changes in the code.

We chose WP Engine to host the site, so we deployed the development environment following the hosting recommended practices and configured GIT to take advantage of WPEngine's automatic deployment. The domain was also configured and additionally we configured CloudFlare to add an extra layer of security and improve the performance of the site.

To complete the development phase, the premium version of the Yoast plugin was configured to optimize SEO. A plugin was also installed to integrate Sendinblue, which allows you to subscribe to the newsletter.
Finally, Google Analytics was installed and the domain was registered in Google Search Console to allow the client to control the traffic of the site and check the status of the pages indexed by the search engine.

Online site: https://inventlikeanowner.com/

Ascentys Advisory is a company dedicated to evaluate strategic sustainability for companies, through a combination of human expertise and sophisticated technology. The target is medium and large companies that have generally not been in a position to measure their sustainability. The main objective of the site is to provide a service so a company can register and start the evaluation process.

Initial phase

After receiving the client's idea, we jumped to design and define the best strategy for the website. The first thing we confirmed was to keep a simple and clean (minimalist) web design, that goes with the topic of the site. For this we've chosen Wordpress, it is a very simple and friendly content management system (CMS). The requirements were simple too, but the security and privacy of the clients was key, so we had to define an architecture that allows users to send attached documents via secured servers without going even through Wordpress.

Development phase

We started with the basic Wordpress implementation and a custom theme from scratch. We are inclined not to use an existing theme since the design was intended to be simple, so we made adjustments to the default theme that Wordpress provide. The client expected to use light and dark version of the design, so we developed that option as well.

The logic of the system was implemented through dynamic forms, in order to allow administrator user to easily manipulate each field for all forms. Once a company representative initiate the process, they can register in the system and once the necessary information has been updated, the user proceeds to complete a 3-steps questionnaire detailing general, economic, environmental and social aspects of their company. In addition to completing the evaluation, the company provides files and documents that will be used by an expert to analyze and extract relevant data for sustainability to be assessed and measured.

We also have to implement each form from scratch, therefore we used Advanced Custom Fields which is a super flexible plugin. This allowed us to create more than 300 questions, divided into 3 main areas, 9 topics and 27 categories. The site administrator is able to choose questions that consider necessary to fulfill the form, so the company can provide the answer just for relevant questions and the rest of them are completed and processed in the admin dashboard by the advisor. In addition, they have the flexibility to create, edit and delete the questions for each company that applies.

As part of the logic, we implement a custom plugin, this plugin also has a feature for exporting all questions in a csv file. The advisor can import this file in any external tool such as MS Excel or Google Spreadsheet.

Security and Privacy

A key implementation for the system was the document manipulation. IRI DarkShield was installed to achieve expected security, which also allows masking files and preventing their use even if a 3rd party tool obtain it. This service allows us to manipulate a list of source files, which cover the following:

1. Text files, MS documents, etc.
2. PDFs and image files
3. NoSQL DBs (MongoDB, Cassandra, and ElasticSearch)
4. Relational Databases
5. Files in AWS S3

In our case we use the firsts two for this project.

Finally, we also cover all necessary for GDPR compliance. The GDPR had a big influence on the way cookies are used in the EU, since this site will be used mainly by European companies, we had an implicit requirement to meet.

Live site: https://www.ascentys-esg.com/