Live WooCommerce Made-to-Order Store — bespoke Build Plate design system, upload-and-quote service, multi-channel sales, and WCAG-compliant storefront
Rare Form Works is a live multi-channel made-to-order products store on a WooCommerce/WordPress stack, selling on its own storefront at rareformworks.com as well as Etsy, eBay, and Amazon, with every channel’s revenue reconciled through a unified finance pipeline. The catalog spans several lines — RC racing tools, bike-service tools, household fixes, and a nesting wellness/yoga line — each product engineered to solve one specific problem and produced to order.
In 2026 the store was given a complete bespoke visual identity — the “Build Plate” design system — delivered entirely as a reversible mu-plugin with no child theme and no database changes: a filament-inspired palette and self-hosted type system layered over Kadence through CSS variables, custom pill and job-card components, a hand-written <canvas> animation, and a category rail. A second bespoke feature is a custom upload-and-quote service: a customer uploads a model or pastes a link, picks a material, and receives an instant non-binding estimate computed in the browser from the parsed model geometry — every pricing coefficient driven from admin-tunable settings. All site email routes through Resend via a custom mu-plugin (no SMTP, no mail plugin), and the frontend is held to WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA, verified with a purpose-built computed-DOM contrast tool.
Built by Howarth Tech Solutions.
A WooCommerce/WordPress build where all bespoke logic lives exclusively in must-use plugins — no child theme, no plugin coupling, no database changes for the design system.
WP core, all third-party plugins and themes, uploads/, and wp-config.php are gitignored by design. Only the mu-plugins, .htaccess, and brand assets are version-controlled — keeping the repo a clean, auditable trail of every bespoke change with no third-party noise. The entire visual rebrand lives in one mu-plugin file; deleting it reverts the site to its base Kadence appearance with no residue.
Everything the store needs to run a production made-to-order business across multiple sales channels — including a bespoke visual identity and a browser-side quoting tool.
<canvas> animation (reduced-motion aware)The engineering behind a WooCommerce store that goes well beyond a configured install.
The Build Plate look remaps the Kadence palette and typography through custom properties printed after the theme’s inline CSS at a controlled hook priority — the entire rebrand is one reversible mu-plugin. The homepage hero is a hand-written, procedural <canvas> animation (reduced-motion aware), and the hero and category rail are implemented as shortcodes. Self-hosted variable fonts eliminate the Google Fonts dependency entirely.
The upload-and-quote estimate is computed entirely client-side from parsed geometry: volume × infill/wall factor × material density × per-gram rate. No server round-trip — the result appears the moment the file is selected. All pricing coefficients (base fee, per-gram rate, material multipliers, build volume limit) are injected from PHP at render time via wp_localize_script, so admin changes take effect on the next page load with no code deployment.
A 5-SKU product line (products, category, media import, variations, shipping classes, dimensions/weights, scheduled pricing) was built by an idempotent WC_Product-API bootstrap script keyed by SKU — re-runnable with no wp-cli on the host. Catalogue-level operations that would normally require admin UI clicks are expressed as code and are repeatable across environments.
Real box-based rates via WooCommerce shipping classes, a woocommerce_shipping_free_shipping_is_available filter that excludes a heavy product line from the free-ship promo (category-keyed, since box classes are shared across lines), and native scheduled sale prices that start and revert on their own. No plugin settings UI to manage — the rules live in code and are version-controlled.
A pre_wp_mail mu-plugin parses mail headers (From, CC, BCC, Reply-To, Content-Type) and POSTs to the Resend API over HTTPS. Every WooCommerce order email, password reset, and admin notification goes through it transparently — no SMTP configuration, no mail plugin layered between WooCommerce and the wire.
WP core, all third-party plugins/themes, uploads/, and secrets are gitignored by design — only mu-plugins, .htaccess, and brand assets are versioned. WCAG remediation lives in its own mu-plugin (separate from the design system) so it survives theme changes; contrast is verified with a computed-style DOM walker rather than static HTML checks.
End-to-end ownership of a live e-commerce product: a complete bespoke rebrand shipped as a reversible mu-plugin design system, headless catalog automation, browser-side geometric estimation driven by server-controlled pricing, channel-aware commerce logic, transactional email without a mail plugin, a multi-channel finance/COGS pipeline, and accessibility engineering verified with a purpose-built computed-DOM contrast tool — all on a production store with active multi-channel sales.
Rare Form Works shows what a production WooCommerce store looks like when the custom logic is engineered properly — a bespoke design system with no theme coupling, browser-side computation, headless catalog automation, channel-aware commerce rules, and accessibility built to last. If your store needs features that go beyond what plugins can do, let’s talk.
The entire visual identity is a bespoke design system (the “Build Plate” mu-plugin) built as CSS-variable overrides with no child theme and no DB changes — deleting one file reverts the site. On top of that: a browser-side upload-and-quote service, headless catalog automation via the WooCommerce API, channel-aware shipping and promo rules in code, and transactional email via Resend HTTPS (no SMTP, no mail plugin). None of this exists in any off-the-shelf WooCommerce extension.
Yes — delivering a full visual identity as a reversible mu-plugin (CSS-variable overrides, no child theme, no DB changes) is exactly what the Build Plate design system demonstrates. See our web design & development service.
Yes — client-side file parsing and browser-based computation with server-controlled pricing config are within scope. See our software development service for full-stack and JavaScript builds.
Tell us what you have in mind and we'll come back with an approach and a flat quote — no obligation.