Ruinous Media: E-commerce Search & Checkout Optimization

Web Developer on Ruinous Media’s WordPress and WooCommerce e-commerce store, collaborating with two other developers. Ruinous Media is a podcast and video production company focused on music content, producing shows like Anti-Heroes, Menopunks, and Tour Stories. Their merchandise store needed significant performance improvements and custom functionality to support their promotional campaigns.

The Challenge

Ruinous Media’s merchandise store was suffering from poor search performance and limited promotional capabilities. Fans trying to find specific band merchandise or show-related products faced the sluggish default WordPress search, leading to frustrated customers and abandoned searches.

Key problems:

• Slow product search: WordPress’s native search couldn’t handle the product catalog efficiently, creating friction in the buying experience
• Limited discount flexibility: WooCommerce’s built-in promotional tools didn’t support the complex discount scenarios the marketing team needed for campaigns
• Manual deployments: Code changes required manual server updates, introducing risk and slowing the development cycle
• Multi-developer coordination: Three developers working on the same codebase needed better workflows to avoid conflicts

What I Built

Algolia Instant Search Integration

Replaced the slow WordPress search with a lightning-fast Algolia-powered search experience:

• Product indexing pipeline that synchronized WooCommerce products to Algolia, including product metadata, categories, pricing, and inventory status
• Vue.js search interface providing instant results as customers typed, with smooth reactive updates
• Faceted filtering allowing customers to filter by product category, price range, and availability
• Search analytics giving the team visibility into what customers were searching for
• Index synchronization ensuring new products and inventory changes reflected in search results automatically

The search transformation was immediately noticeable—customers could find merchandise in milliseconds instead of waiting for WordPress’s slow database queries.

Custom WooCommerce Discount Logic

Developed flexible promotional pricing to support marketing campaigns:

• Tiered discount rules enabling percentage-off promotions based on cart contents
• Product-specific promotions for featured merchandise and new releases
• Cart-based pricing logic with custom rules that WooCommerce’s native system couldn’t support
• Promotional code handling with validation and stacking rules

This required careful integration with WooCommerce’s hook and filter system, ensuring discounts applied correctly through checkout without breaking the payment flow.

CI/CD Pipeline

Established automated deployments to improve development velocity:

• Bitbucket Pipelines configuration for automated build and deployment
• Environment separation with staging and production deployment targets
• Automated testing running PHPUnit tests before deployment
• Deployment notifications keeping the team informed of release status

The pipeline reduced deployment risk and freed developers from manual server updates.

Technical Context

WooCommerce’s architecture presented significant challenges throughout this project. The platform’s extensive hook and filter system requires deep knowledge of its internals to extend safely. Every customization needed careful consideration of:

• Hook execution order to ensure discounts and pricing calculated correctly
• Cart session handling to maintain state through the checkout process
• Payment gateway compatibility to ensure custom pricing worked with all payment methods
• Plugin conflicts as the store ran multiple third-party plugins alongside our customizations

Working with two other developers also required establishing clear code ownership and review processes to avoid stepping on each other’s work.

Outcome

The Algolia integration transformed the search experience from a frustration point into a smooth product discovery flow. Customers could instantly find the merchandise they wanted, reducing search abandonment and improving conversion rates.

The custom discount logic gave the marketing team the promotional flexibility they needed for campaigns, while the CI/CD pipeline improved development velocity and reduced deployment-related incidents. The improvements enabled Ruinous Media to run more effective merchandise campaigns while providing fans with a better shopping experience.

Technical context: WooCommerce’s architecture made customization particularly challenging. The codebase required careful navigation of hooks, filters, and the plugin’s internal data structures to implement the custom features without breaking core functionality.

Implemented solutions:

• Custom E-commerce Functionality
• Custom Discount Logic
• Fast Data Search
• Intelligent Product Search
• Development and Deployment Pipeline
• Flexible Content Management

Used technologies: