Lightspeed Development

Slimmer with SARIE is a brand new online project, where SARIE gives any enthusiast the chance to learn more about their hobby or the opportunity to learn new skills – all from the comfort of their own home!

Client supplied a logo and really clear branding guidelines, together with some example sites for a look and feel. Sensei LMS was used to manage the course material and learner aspects of the site, together with WooCommerce to handle the memberships and payments at sign up.

Our LSX theme was already compatible with the Sensei plugin so custom styling was kept to a minimum. We are really looking forward to seeing this site grow as they add more online courses.

Times have changed and so has the wedding industry. The focus now is on sustainability, local suppliers and affordability. Brides think twice before buying a brand-new dress and opt for simpler flower arrangements and environmentally friendly invitations and confetti.
After being involved in the industry for a decade, SARIE BRUID knows weddings are not cheap, planning the perfect reception is not easy and being a business owner even less so! Especially with restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic in place.

SARIE BRUID: (ver)koop my rok & ander dienste presents a unique solution for brides and brides-to-be and is SARIE’s answer to bring our readers into contact with inspiring local suppliers.

This brand-new website offers affordable advertising packages for suppliers, a selection of wedding dresses for brides-to-be, and a chance for newly-weds to sell their dress and recover some of their costs.

The site is powered by WordPress & WooCommerce, with the official Subscriptions and Memberships add ons. The services directory uses our very own LSX Business Directory. We elected to use WP Adverts for the wedding dresses portion because it fit the project requirement so perfectly. Digital projects in Afrikaans are a big challenge. None of the plugin software has been fully translated to Afrikaans yet, most of them are partially translated; most of the existing translations were unsuited, and we customised them for this project. As with all our projects, we used our LSX Theme.

In 2021 they relaunched their website. The client was happy with their existing site design, so we kept most of their look and feel. The old website was not easy for content managers to edit, most pages were hardcoded with page templates, which more often than not required a developer to update pages. We implemented WooCommerce with WooCommerce Subscriptions, WooCommerce Memberships and Sensei Pro to solve their base requirements. We created various subscription products for individual students, they could sign up and gain access to the ebooks.

We developed a Snapplify Integration with WooCommerce Subscriptions. There was no API documentation available for Snapplify, which meant our lead developer needed to work closely with the Snapplify Team to help them test their "Subscription" API. This API allows you to register a list of books as a "subscription" product (in snapplify), and you are allowed to purchase access to that subscription via the client website.

This site uses WooCommerce and Sensei Pro LMS to sell courses on DIY.

Huisgenoot is the magazine with the highest circulation in South Africa. The website uses workout and meal plan content from the print magazine, Extra workout groupings were needed to accommodate all of the content. The site uses LightSpeed's LSX theme and LSX Health Plan plugin combined with WooCommerce and WooCommerce Memberships.

12 Weeks to Sleek is an online workout and dietary plan from well-known South African women’s magazine Fairlady.

Created by professional fitness trainers and dieticians, the program contains a healthy meal plan and workout regimen that women can tackle at their own pace, in their own home. The goal is to achieve healthy and lasting weight loss.

These tried and tested workouts use minimal equipment, and meals can be customized to suit any budget. Trainer Aneeka Buys and dietician Carey Anne Seady guide and motivate users daily or weekly. “The plan is designed for an average woman to lose around one kilo per week – that’s a healthy, realistic weight loss that you’ll be able to sustain.”

“The plan is designed for an average woman to lose around one kilo per week – that’s a healthy, realistic weight loss that you’ll be able to sustain.”

Fairlady approached South African WooExperts, LightSpeed, to create a website where readers could sign up and pay for the course.

WooCommerce Memberships was the obvious choice, but the project was not without its challenges. Workouts and meal plans needed to be restricted by login, and be available for download in the members’ area. Customers also needed to be able to access and take a supplied fitness test to help inform them as to where they needed to start on the plan.

“We needed to build a plugin that displayed the meal and exercise plans in a chronological order that the reader could work through logically, and mark days complete as they progress,” says Ashley Shaw.

To this end, LightSpeed developed the LSX Health Plan plugin specifically for 12 Weeks to Sleek. Their team also created two new post types – recipes and workouts – that can be added to the Day Plan.

“Additionally, the plan can be structured per day or per week, which allows shorter duration health programs to be used with the software,” adds Shaw.

go! Take Better Photos is an online photography course run by popular South African lifestyle magazine, go!

Photography is a fundamental pillar of this monthly publication covering a wide range of travel and outdoor lifestyle topics. With this in mind, the go! team created an online training course that enables their audience to master the basic principles of digital photography while growing in confidence as a photographer.

Take Better Photos consists of six modules, with connected lessons relating to each module. Students who enroll can start at any time and from anywhere. After finishing each lesson, they must complete an accompanying quiz to progress. Once they pass the course, students receive a certificate of completion and are encouraged to submit their work for publication consideration.

“Thanks to the power of the Storefront theme and the WooCommerce and Sensei plugins, we were able to build this fully-fledged learning platform, allowing the client to focus on creating, managing, and uploading their content.”

South African WooExperts, LightSpeed, came on board to build the site for this online course – a key step to bring everything together and make Take Better Photos a reality.

“We used the Sensei learner management solution combined with WooCommerce, and built the site with the Storefront theme,” explains Ashley Shaw, Lightspeed’s founder and CEO.

“Storefront was compatible with Sensei LMS and WooCommerce out the box, so we focused on showcasing the imagery on the homepage and creating a simple solution for the client so that they could manage and upload their own content.”

With only being one product sold – the course – Lightspeed chose to bypass the cart phase of checkout. Instead, the product is automatically added to the cart when customers sign up, and they are directed straight to checkout for payment.

African Safaris is a local travel agency attracting mainly international customers. They assist clients in finding a tour or accommodation tailor-made to suit their needs. Their head offices are in New York with consultants working across Africa. We integrated African Safari Consultants’ website with TourPlan, a program for tour operators providing accurate accommodation prices. They store live room rates for thousands of accommodations throughout Africa. We found a solution that allowed us to pull through the rooms and rates that are available. The room rates go into a single accommodation screen allowing users to then do a price rate search for the dates that they are interested in. This functionality also works with switching currencies and we were therefore able to bring through multiple currency rates.