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Extra Chill

Professional music blog, e-commerce store, community forum, and events calendar.

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Under the Hood

WordPress, WooCommerce, The Events Calendar, bbPress, Ticketmaster API, Eventbrite, DICE.FM API, Custom Taxonomies, Printful, Sendy API, Custom Web Scraping

Extra Chill
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I built Extra Chill from the ground up as a comprehensive music platform, seamlessly combining a blog, forum, e-commerce store, and live events calendar.

This project showcases not only my expertise in music journalism and community-building, but also my technical proficiency in WordPress development, SEO, and API integrations.

Key Stats:

  • Peaked at 300,000 monthly visitors via SEO traffic.
  • Monetized with Mediavine display ads.
  • Built a dedicated following in the independent music world.

Customized WordPress theme includes:

  • Custom Location Taxonomies for organizing local & regional content.
  • Newsletter System powered by the Sendy API with a custom Newsletter post type.
  • Smart Subscriber Growth: Pop-up on scroll-to-bottom.
  • Custom Loft Sans Header Font created by the band Wilco.
  • Reddit-style Upvote System for both articles & forum posts.
  • Reading Progress Indicator for improved engagement.

Fully-Integrated WooCommerce Store

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Extra Chill’s WooCommerce store is fully integrated into the blog, designed for a seamless user experience with intuitive product navigation and fast checkout.

Key Features:

  • Printful Integration for print-on-demand products.
  • Custom Product Category Toolbar for better browsing.
  • Floating Cart Icon in the blog header with live item count.

Customized The Events Calendar Plugin

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A live events calendar plugin powered by The Events Calendar by Modern Tribe, including several custom-built integrations.

Key Features:

  • API Integrations: Ticketmaster, DICE.FM, Eventbrite.
  • Automated Event Listings via custom web scraping for local venues.
  • Location Taxonomies for easy sorting by city & region.

bbPress Community Forum

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A fully-integrated bbPress forum, built to foster an engaged music community with interactive features, gamification, and social-style networking.

Key Features:

  • Reddit-Style Upvotes for both forum posts & blog articles.
  • Cross-Domain Session Tokens for unified login across the blog & forum.
  • Gamification System with custom points & rankings based on user activity.
  • Social Media-Style Followers System for networking.
  • Myspace-Inspired Profiles with artist-focused features.
  • Live Activity Widgets showing forum engagement in real-time.
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