Polishing a diamond

The challenge

There is a moment in every project – the one where 95% of the work is already behind you. You can see the result, there is something to be proud of, but a few stubborn technical problems stand between you and the finish line. And those last few metres turn out to be the hardest.

That is how my work with a very talented client began. She had single-handedly built the foundations of her online shop. A huge amount of work – but just before the grand opening she ran into a few obstacles where she needed support. My job was to polish that diamond.

What I did

Obstacle 1: the forgotten “locked door”. The shop still had the “Coming soon” mode active, visible to every logged-out visitor. A classic launch blocker – a quick diagnosis and a single click opened the doors to customers.

Obstacle 2: the first impression. I added a side menu to make browsing categories easier and improved the visibility of the search box on phones. Small touches that decide whether a customer finds what they are looking for – or gives up and leaves.

Obstacle 3: the logic of the return path (breadcrumbs). The hardest one. When a product belonged to two categories, the return path always showed the default one – ignoring where the user actually came from. As if someone walking into the shoe section were sent back to the hats. Standard plugins could not handle it – I had to look “under the hood” and write custom code that intelligently tracks the user path:

// Kluczowy fragment kodu dodany do functions.php
// Sprawdza, czy użytkownik wszedł na stronę produktu z konkretnej podkategorii.
$force_subcat = isset($_GET['force_subcat'])
    ? sanitize_text_field($_GET['force_subcat'])
    : '';
if ($force_subcat) {
    // pobieram informacje o tej kategorii i dynamicznie
    // modyfikuję „okruszki", by pokazywały poprawną ścieżkę.
}

The result

That code was the last piece of the puzzle. Once deployed, the barriers were gone and the shop was finally ready for its first customers. In projects like this, the greatest satisfaction comes from exactly that breakthrough moment – helping other creators overcome the technical obstacles that stand between them and showing their vision to the world.