| Client | Self-initiated demo store |
| Type | WooCommerce store · Bilingual |
| Languages | EN + UK (storefront) |
| Stack | WordPress · WooCommerce · Polylang · Stripe · Custom theme |
| Live since | June 2026 |
| Live at | noiroast.com |
Noiroast is a fictional specialty-coffee roastery I designed and built as a working storefront — not a mockup. The goal was a single, public artifact that proves WooCommerce, multilingual setup, custom theming, and design can come together in one production-quality site, built at zero plugin cost and honest about where free tooling stops.
The challenge
A storefront has to do more than look good. It needs a real catalogue, a real checkout, two languages that don’t fall apart, and an update-safe codebase a future owner could maintain. I set out to deliver all of that with free plugins and a hand-built theme — no page builder, no premium add-ons — and to document the trade-offs rather than hide them.
My approach
- Built a custom classic theme from scratch — the Noir Coffee palette, Fraunces and Inter, and a hand-coded landing page (hero, origin story, brew process, products, call to action) using pure-CSS effects and no page builder.
- Set up WooCommerce with three specialty products, each with custom label artwork, a roast-level indicator, and tasting notes.
- Made the storefront bilingual with Polylang Free — landing, products, taxonomy, and brand UI fully localised in English and Ukrainian, with a language switcher and hreflang; the landing UI is translated with a filter-based gettext map rather than fragile .mo files.
- Styled WooCommerce the update-safe way — CSS-first with PHP hooks instead of template overrides, plus product-card hover effects (a peek-overlay and a subtle pointer-tilt) and checkout contrast fixes.
- Wired a working checkout — Stripe in test mode alongside a bank-transfer fallback, with a clear demo disclaimer so nothing is mistaken for a live shop.
Outcomes
A publicly live, fully navigable bilingual store with an end-to-end checkout that completes on two payment methods. No paid plugins, no template overrides — the theme survives WooCommerce updates, and the whole build doubles as proof of WooCommerce, Polylang, custom-theme, and design work in one place.
Known trade-offs
Bilingual storefront on Polylang Free: landing, products, taxonomy and brand UI are fully localised EN/UK. WooCommerce system pages (Shop, Cart, Checkout) route in English — full checkout i18n requires the paid Polylang for WooCommerce add-on or TranslatePress, intentionally out of scope for this demo. “Roaster’s Choice” is presented as a monthly box but built as a simple product, with no real recurring billing. Payments run in Stripe test mode — no money moves. Each is a conscious choice for a zero-cost demo, called out rather than papered over.
Stack
WordPress · WooCommerce · PHP 8.3 · Polylang (Free) · Stripe (test) · Bank transfer · Custom theme (no framework) · Vanilla CSS/JS · LiteSpeed Cache · Hostinger
Want to reach customers online? Here’s what that looks like
Maybe you already run a business — a shop or an office — and want to reach a wider audience. Or maybe you’re just looking into selling online for the first time. Either way, the audience on the internet is huge, and here’s a working example of a store built to reach it, explained in plain English.
This is a real, working shop, not a picture of one. You can browse products, add them to a cart, and place an order from start to finish — exactly what a customer would do. Under the hood it runs on WordPress and WooCommerce, the most widely used free software for online stores, which means no monthly platform fees and full ownership of your site. It’s built in two languages, so customers can read it in their own — handy if you sell beyond one country. Card payments connect through Stripe, a standard and trusted payment provider, shown here in a safe “test mode” where no real money moves; on a live shop the very same setup accepts real payments. And the look is custom-designed, so your brand stands out instead of looking like a template.
The takeaway: this is the kind of foundation you would own outright — easy to expand later with more products, subscriptions, extra languages, or a blog, and built to keep running smoothly as the software updates.