Brendon Rice
Back end projects

Case study · Northside Print & Design

Their whole shop,brought in‑house.

Northside is a Brisbane print shop. Their price calculator, online design editor and every price lived on a print platform they rented by the month and couldn't change. I rebuilt each part as plugins on their own server, moved every price across without losing one, and added the things they'd been missing.

Job ticketNorthside Print & Design
Replaced
OnPrintShop, a hosted platform with a monthly fee
Built
4 WordPress plugins
Moved
83 products, 4,719 price rows
Checked
0 differences, 399 automated tests
Runs on
Their own server. The code is theirs.
Approved

The starting point

Rented, not owned.

The website had Northside's name on it, but the parts that made money didn't belong to them. To price a job, design a business card or check out, customers were sent to OnPrintShop at a different address.

Northside paid for it every month and couldn't change how any of it worked. The goal was to bring the whole shop home, keep every price exactly as it was, and make it theirs to change.

Before

Their websitePages, products, contact
OnPrintShopRented · monthly
  • Price calculator
  • Design editor
  • Products & prices
  • Cart & checkout

Couldn't be changed. No API.

After

Their serverOwned
Their websiteOne address, start to finish
Northside PricingRebuilt
Northside DesignerRebuilt
Pay On AccountNew
BundlesNew
Their database83 products · 4,719 prices

No platform fee. Source code handed over.

The move

What came in‑house.

Seven pieces changed hands. Three were rebuilt, one was moved, two are new and one is gone.

  1. Price calculatorNorthside Pricing plugin, prices worked out on their serverRebuilt
  2. Online design editorNorthside Designer plugin, print-ready CMYK filesRebuilt
  3. Products and prices, locked in the platform4,719 price rows in their own database, 0 differencesMoved
  4. Quotes and artwork templatesEmail Me This Quote with a PDF, template downloads, artwork upload at checkoutRebuilt
  5. Not availablePay On Account for trade customersNew
  6. Not availableBundles, several products sold as one job at one priceNew
  7. Monthly platform subscriptionNone. Source code handed over, no ongoing feesGone

Getting the data out

Every price moved. Not one lost.

OnPrintShop has no API, and its export left out two things Northside needed: which prices were switched on, and the markup on each one.

So a script read every price straight from their admin screens. The import into their own database was then checked row by row against the original.

  1. ReadEvery price, from the admin screens
  2. ImportInto their own database
  3. CheckRow by row against the original

Plugin one · Northside Pricing

A calculator that knows print.

Print pricing isn't a formula. Each product has its own table of sizes and quantities, options that cost more on bigger sizes, and combinations they don't print. The plugin holds all of it.

  • Every price comes from their own tables, and is worked out again on the server at every step, so it can't be changed in the browser.
  • Staff edit prices in a grid where cost, markup and price stay linked, or update the whole catalogue in one spreadsheet, with a preview before anything is saved.
  • Rules hide sizes and options that don't go together, so customers only see jobs that can be printed.
  • Quotes go out by email with a PDF, and artwork is uploaded at checkout.

399 automated checks run against the pricing engine.

Plugin two · Northside Designer

Designed in the browser. Ready for the press.

Customers who don't have artwork design it on the product page. What they make has to come out as a file the press can print, not a screenshot.

  • Opens at the exact size picked in the calculator, with bleed, cut and safe lines drawn on the page.
  • Designs save to the customer's account, ready to edit or reorder.
  • Print files are built as layered PDFs with the original photos and real text, then converted to CMYK on the server.
  • Flags come out in their actual shape, one page per side.
  • Staff can turn any print-ready PDF into a template customers fill in. The old shop's templates were converted, not redrawn.
  1. Designed onlineAt the exact size, with bleed and cut lines
  2. Layered PDFOriginal photos, real text
  3. CMYK on the serverConverted with Ghostscript
  4. Ready for the pressNo screenshots, no rework

And a few more

Things they couldn't do before.

Rebuilt

Email Me This Quote

Customers send themselves a quote as a PDF, download artwork templates, and upload their artwork at checkout.

New

Pay On Account

Trade customers they trust can check out without a card. The order comes through unpaid, ready to invoice.

New

Bundles

Several print products, each with a fixed size, quantity and options, sold as one job at one price to the customers they choose.

Where it landed

Their shop. Their prices. Their code.

Communication was excellent throughout the project. Whenever I had a question or needed something adjusted, Brendon was quick to get back to me and help work through it. His experience and knowledge were clear from the outset, which gave me confidence that the project was in good hands.

Dominic Alberth Northside Print & Design

Built with WordPress · WooCommerce · PHP 8 · MySQL · Fabric.js · pdf-lib · Ghostscript

If you can describe it,
I can build it.

Talk about a project All back end projects