I just released a significant update to the Data on Wheels ~ ALS website. I launched the website in September 2025. That was only five months ago.

My goals for the website are

1. Create a single hub for the content Sheila and I are creating
2. Share resources and tools we have used and are using while living with ALS
3. Create and share new content on life and faith, struggles and hope, stories and learnings

While the site was meeting the goals well, some my early decisions were hindering some key aspects including tool discoverability and shareability. In this post, I go through the problems and solutions I encountered along the way. The focus is on the changes to how we handle tools as part of the second goal. Let’s dig into it!

Contents

• What I started with
• Pain points with the existing format
• The decision to move to an ecommerce platform
• Implementing the changes
• What wasn’t working
• The impact of changing the theme
• Lessons learned
• What’s next

What I started with

Handling the tools on the website was always a challenge for me. I wanted an elegant yet functional design. I started by creating a single tools page. I organized the tools in a three-tier hierarchy as shown here:

• Group, for example, Health and Lifestyle
  • Category, such as, Breathing and Entertainment.
    • Tools, like Astral 100 and Kindle.

I initially used an accordion block for group. The accordion block collapses the contents and shows the contents when clicked. Next, I nested the category in an accordion block inside the group. I then used another accordion block for tools inside of categories. I quickly realized that this did not help with discovery and made sharing a lost cause. If I wanted to share Kindle with someone, I could only share the page. This would force the person I shared with to blindly dig for the content they were looking for.

Blocks are design elements used in WordPress to simplify page development. This includes heading, paragraph, and list blocks. Other blocks like accordion and tabs are containers for other blocks.

This was not a good or helpful solution. I won’t go through all the iterations. My biggest breakthrough was finding the tabs block. The important functionality was the addition of a “#” link to the tab (e.g. /tools/#health). Now we could share groups and categories. I left the tools in an accordion block.

As I added more tools, page load times slowed down. This led to my decision to split the tools out to their own page. This is the structure I landed on before moving to the catalog structure.

Tools page
|  Group page
| |  Category tab block
| | |  Tools accordion

Pain points with the existing format

I really liked the elegance of the solution, but the following pain points still existed:

1. You were still unable to share individual tools. Using tabs for individual tools could work, but I did not like the appearance nor usability.
2. Further compounding the issue was page load performance. We have over 70 tools added with 40+ yet to add.
3. There was no easy way to filter or search the tools.

The decision to move to an ecommerce platform

The pain points were making me question my design choices. I liked the look and feel but looks don’t guide people to what they were looking for. One morning, I had a “shower moment” while Sheila was giving me my daily sponge bath. I cracked up laughing, silently of course. Sheila thought something was wrong with me. Later, when I had my eye gaze computer back, I told her why I was laughing.

My revelation was that I needed to give my users an Amazon-like experience. I needed to treat tools like products in ecommerce stores.

WooCommerce is the standard for online stores in WordPress. At this point, I needed some questions answered like “Can I hide prices?” I turned to Microsoft Copilot and started researching. I learned a lot and made an informed decision to move forward with WooCommerce.

Implementing the changes

Implementing WooCommerce was simple. I installed the plug-in and started adding tools as products. This was a tedious migration. After setting up groups and categories as the product category, I got to copy and paste all textual content for over 70 tools. Once this was done, I started to create new pages to display the contents. This is where I started to run into issues.

What wasn’t working

The first issue I ran into was adding filters to the category pages. I was creating five category pages to replace the group pages. When I added the filter, it looked good but didn’t work. I spent a few hours troubleshooting with the help of Copilot. It turns out that I was using a WordPress theme that was not compatible with WooCommerce.

While it appeared to work fine, my theme, Rufous, had limits on its ability to be modified because it is a classic theme. I needed a newer block theme to support the features I wanted from WooCommerce. I used Copilot to find recommendations for a new block theme that was similar to Rufous. I ended up choosing Neve FSE. Now comes the hard part, changing themes.

A WordPress theme is a collection of templates, stylesheets, and design files that control how a WordPress site looks and displays content. It determines elements like layout, colors, typography, and overall visual structure. Choosing a theme shapes the user experience and helps tailor a site’s appearance to match a brand or purpose.

The impact of changing the theme

Changing a WordPress theme is easy. Cleaning up the mess it can create isn’t. Working with help from Copilot, I knew I would lose my header and footer at a minimum, but my content should stay intact. Because I was not sure what else would be impacted, I fired up my staging site and started testing and planning.

Here are some more impacts of the change beyond the header and footer:

• Kubio is not an ideal choice for designing pages in the new theme. It is not fully compatible with the new block theme. I don’t have to change it right away, but I didn’t want to use it for WooCommerce or new content.
• Block themes use a new editor. I needed to learn how to use it.
• Block themes are template driven. In Rufous, I rarely touched a template. In Neve, I do most of my design work there.
• I had a few plug-ins that were not compatible with the new theme like Better Search. I usually fall back to the native functionality when that happens.

I went through all my existing content to make sure pages and posts were still working. I set up the key WooCommerce templates. I made a plan and executed it. I was able to do the production conversion in just a couple of hours. While I am still cleaning up some issues, it went pretty smoothly for a guy with no hands. The tools catalog is up and running and individual tool pages can be shared. Overall, it went pretty well.

Lessons learned

I am going to focus on three lessons I learned in this upgrade.

1. Using AI made the whole process easier. I used Copilot for three specific things during this process.
   • Research. I asked a lot of questions about the best options. I did not have to waste time as Copilot summarized the information for me. If I needed details I could review the references.
   • Troubleshooting. I ran into issues, and Copilot had answers.
   • Code. In some cases, I needed CSS or PHP to get my desired functionality like sticky headers and menu badges. Copilot generated the code and told me where to put it.
2. Development and testing on the staging environment. My GoDaddy hosting plan includes a staging environment. I used it to plan the upgrade and work out the kinks. This is very important because most changes in WordPress get deployed when saved.
3. No one likes testing. I reached out to over 100 individuals to help with testing and only had a few responses. Next time I will try to recruit specific individuals.

What’s next

I still have some clean up to do. I also have 50 more tools to add. I will continue to work through them while taking time to create content. I am learning a lot which makes this fun. I hope you find this useful and informative.