Claus is a Danish entrepreneur and passionate car enthusiast. BookAclassic was brought into the world because we'd had enough of characterless, dull, and boringly practical vehicles.

The client had been utilizing WordPress as their content management system (CMS) for several years and found it satisfactory in managing their content. However, they encountered challenges with integrating WordPress seamlessly into our bespoke system. To address this, our solution involved creating a new instance of WordPress that we optimized and enhanced to better align with our specific requirements. We then proceeded to strip away the default presentation layer of WordPress and implemented our own customized presentation layer. This significant modification allowed us to achieve a much tighter integration of content within our system compared to previous attempts.

Given that our system operates in 37 countries, it was crucial to have a CMS that offered easy management capabilities. By adopting our customized WordPress implementation, we were able to streamline content management processes, providing the client with a more efficient and user-friendly experience across all the countries where our system is deployed. This improved integration and simplified management of content were instrumental in ensuring seamless operations and effective communication across the extensive geographic reach of the client's business.

The system underwent a redesign to address the issue of 37 individual instances of the system and CMS, each operating independently without the ability to share information. One of the primary objectives of the redesign was to reduce the number of instances and enable data sharing among them. This resulted in significant improvements for customers, such as a customer from Denmark accessing the co.uk website instance, discovering and booking a vehicle from the UK for their upcoming UK holiday. Previously, customers had to navigate to the specific country site, create a new account, provide profile and payment details, and then proceed with booking a vehicle.

Furthermore, this redesign introduced a global management system, enabling the administration of all 37 countries from a single interface. Despite the consolidation, fine-grained access control was retained, allowing administrators to have country-specific roles (e.g., PT country manager admin) if needed. The merging of all 37 countries' data necessitated the creation of a new and redesigned database, providing a foundation for the implementation of numerous new features and facilitating the system's growth.

By consolidating the instances, enabling data sharing, and implementing a unified management system, the redesign not only enhanced the customer experience but also streamlined administrative processes and paved the way for future enhancements and scalability across the entire platform.

The redesigned system successfully resolved the challenge of managing 37 individual instances of the system and CMS, enabling efficient data sharing and streamlining customer experiences. Customers now have the convenience of accessing and booking vehicles across different countries' websites without the need for multiple accounts and redundant data entry.