Full Website Revamp for Wakeboard Boats Buying & Selling Platform
This online platform is quite popular for buying and selling wakeboard boats and accessories. Originally built on WordPress, the site had grown over time but so had its technical issues.
The client was dealing with:
- Frequent site crashes
- Plugin conflicts
- Limited design flexibility
- Major trouble integrating with Shopify
It was clear they had outgrown WordPress and needed a more robust, scalable platform to support their growing business.
Objective
The mission was simple but ambitious: Rebuild the entire site on Xperience by Kentico, a more stable and enterprise-grade CMS, with: Seamless Shopify integration Better media and product management A modern, secure, and scalable infrastructure
Key Challenges & Solutions
Media Migration & Data Integration Challenges During Platform Transformation
1. Migrating 275+ GB of Media Assets from Legacy WordPress to Azure
Problem:
The legacy WordPress site housed over 275 GB of boat listing images. The size and complexity of data
posed a significant challenge in terms of extraction and cloud migration.
Resolution:
Our team developed a robust PowerShell script that systematically fetched and uploaded the entire
media
library to Azure Blob Storage. The logic accounted for authentication, chunking large file transfers,
and preserving directory structures.
2. Integrating Azure Media Assets into Xperience by Kentico
Problem:
Once migrated, the next hurdle was integrating the large image set into the Xperience by Kentico CMS
without manual uploads or data duplication.
Resolution:
We developed a custom integration layer within Kentico to link images stored on Azure directly into
the Kentico media library. This ensured performance optimization and storage scalability while
maintaining clean media referencing in content objects.
3. Maintaining Correct Image Order for Product Listings
Problem:
Each boat listing had multiple images (e.g., 13+ per boat) that needed to appear in a specific
sequence. This order information was not inherently preserved in WordPress exports.
Resolution:
Our developers built a .NET Core console application that fetched metadata from the original WordPress
database, including image ordering. The script parsed and injected the image order data into the new
Kentico database, ensuring that images appeared correctly in front-end galleries.
4. Filtering Out Redundant Thumbnails & Resolving Filename Casing Issues
Problem:
WordPress automatically generates multiple thumbnail versions for every image. These unwanted versions
significantly bloated the data transfer to Azure. Additionally, discrepancies in filename casing
(e.g., Boat1.jpg vs. boat1.jpg) caused media referencing errors in Kentico.
Resolution:
A second PowerShell script was authored to:
- Detect and exclude WordPress-generated thumbnails during migration.
- Normalize filename casing and replace upper-case references where necessary. This cleanup ensured that only usable, correctly referenced media was ingested into Kentico.
DotStark has been an incredible support partner during our complete website rebuild on the XbyK platform. Their team was consistently available, going above and beyond even working late nights and long hours to help us meet critical deadlines. Communication was excellent, and the pricing was very reasonable. A special thanks to Starkmates, who was always responsive and ready to assist, no matter the hour. I truly appreciate the dedication and would gladly work with him again.
6. Missing Product Association on Post-Purchase Redirect
Problem:
After a user completed a purchase on Shopify, they were redirected to a Kentico-hosted "Thank You"
page. However, the backend could not identify which product or plan the user had
purchased, leading to issues in personalization and data logging.
Resolution:
Our team implemented a solution using GraphQL and WebHooks, passing
mandatory
custom parameters
(e.g., Member ID and Boat ID) during checkout. These identifiers enabled
accurate tracking of the purchased plan and its associated products.
Result: This provided clarity on user purchases and helped maintain a synchronized state between Shopify and Kentico systems.