The Business Exchange rebuild
A full digital platform rebuild for a regional publishing brand. Decoupled heavy Woocommerce functionality from two magazine sites into a dedicated centralised ticketing platform, significantly improving site speed and editorial workflow.
Overview
Anita runs The Business Exchange, a South West publishing brand with two regional magazines and a busy events programme. The sites had become bloated with plugins and duplicated WooCommerce installs, slowing everything down. The goal was to make them faster and decouple the heavy ticketing functionality.
The Bath and Swindon sites needed to become lightweight brochure-style sites again, focused on news, directories, and magazines. I added a third, dedicated site to handle all events and ticketing, centralising what had been duplicated across both regional installs.
The solution was a hub-and-spoke setup. I created tbe-events.co.uk as the parent WooCommerce install handling all ticketing. The regional sites share one custom theme and pull events via the REST API with cached responses and location filtering.
I kept the existing databases so Anita didn’t lose any content. I refactored the data into a new theme structure, mapping legacy fields to Gutenberg blocks and cleaning out old tables and orphaned metadata.
I rebuilt the theme with 21 custom ACF blocks covering news, events, business listings, podcasts, magazines, and more. Performance work includes purpose-built image sizes, transient caching, and leaner asset loading.
All three sites are now live: Bath & Somerset, Swindon & Wiltshire, and the events platform. The regional sites load significantly faster without WooCommerce, while the events platform handles all the complexity in one place.
Key Features
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Multi-Site Architecture & Centralised Ticketing
One WooCommerce parent on tbe-events.co.uk handles all event sales. Regional sites link through instead of running duplicate shops.
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VIP Section
Transferred from Mighty Networks to a new central portal that allows submissions of stories directly to Anita, ready for checking.
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Remote Events API with Regional Filtering
Regional sites surface upcoming events from the parent via the REST API, with transient caching and Bath/Swindon location filtering.
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Story Submission
When a VIP submits a story Anita can push that story from events site to the Bath or Swindon site ready for 1 of her team to check it over and approve publishing. This used to be done via email.
Project Gallery
Walkthrough of The Business Exchange regional magazine sites and the central events platform, showing news, events, business directory, and ticketing flows.
tbebathandsomerset.co.uk
“Steve is a highly skilled developer who takes the time to listen, understand the brief and deliver exactly what's needed. He consistently goes above and beyond, bringing his own ideas and expertise to enhance the final outcome. Our websites are often complex, but Steve has always risen to every challenge I've presented him with, finding solutions and delivering excellent results. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Steve for your next project.”
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