The Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History is a non-profit history society dedicated to furthering the documentation and presentation of the Columbia Basin's human and natural history. They take as a first principle that ‘all that has gone before has the potential to inform our present actions and shape our future ones’.
The CBIRH wanted to completely overhaul their website and bring it into the modern age. This was truly huge site that was built up over many years, and needed a hand consolidating their content and upgrading their processes. All of this, without interrupting their eCommerce systems, and their online Archives.
Eggplant Studios expertly redesigned this website using a custom WordPress theme, meticulously preserving the integrity of all content types. We implemented WooCommerce for the online store and developed a custom Laravel application to manage their extensive image archives. The project was a great success, and the client is extremely satisfied with the outcome.
This website involved extensive customizations and was an enjoyable project to work on.
Memberships:
The Basin Institute features a membership portal. Memberships offer access to special discounted rates on prints and digital photos from their Image Archive.
Exhibits and Projects:
The Basin Institute supports numerous initiatives throughout the Columbia Valley, cataloging these as Exhibits or Projects on the website.
eCommerce:
We utilize WooCommerce to manage online sales, including memberships and general items from the Shop page, as well as the ability to order prints or digital images from the Image Archive. With over 100,000 images in the archive, Eggplant Studios implemented innovative coding solutions to avoid creating 100,000 individual products on the back end. This allows the Basin Institute to sell reproductions of any image via two specialized WooCommerce products.
Image Archive:
The image archive is powered by a custom-developed Laravel application. This solution was chosen because the extensive needs and requirements for each record exceeded what WordPress could handle efficiently. The application is integrated with WordPress through several API-enabled endpoints, which populate the image archive on the WordPress side. Utilizing advanced caching techniques, dynamic URL states, and session management, users can seamlessly browse the Image Archive without realizing it is managed by an external system.