Case study · Website work
Gulf Coast Velocity Data
Data store — velocitydata.com
Gulf Coast Velocity Data sells well data from the Gulf Coast: velocity and directional surveys, well curves and more. The starting point for the new site was what the Wayback Machine had kept of the old one. It needed a store where a customer can find a well, pay, and get the files without waiting on anyone.
What we built
- A catalog of datasets with pricing, samples and a What's new page, searchable by well or browsed on a map.
- Cart and PayPal Checkout, with download links on the confirmation page and by email. Downloads are token-protected.
- Delivery that copes with a missing file. If a paid item has no file on the server yet, the order is marked Needs files, the customer is told it will follow within one business day, and the owner gets an email listing what is missing. Uploading the file and pressing Resend download email finishes the order.
- An admin for orders, clients, messages, discounts and resending download links.
- Large datasets within the host's limits. GoDaddy caps an account at about 250,000 files, so a dataset bigger than that stays in one zip on the server, and a well's files are pulled out the first time someone buys it.
- Catalog refreshes that don't stop orders. A new catalog is swapped in on its own after the live database is backed up, and the orders, clients and messages are checked to have kept every row.
How it's built
Plain PHP pages, a SQLite catalog, PayPal Checkout and automatic download delivery. There are no plugins, no theme licences and no Composer packages; it needs only the PHP that GoDaddy cPanel already provides. Code deploys itself: every change is syntax-checked, only the changed files are sent to the server, and the live pages and map are smoke-tested afterwards, with an email if anything fails. The data is built separately and uploaded on its own.
Outcome
Rebuilt from what the Wayback Machine had kept of the old site. Buying and delivery are now automatic, with no one in the loop.