PROJECT DESCRIPTION

I developed an e-commerce site for a fictitious business called “Locale” selling studio pieces from local artists. The store is based out of southern California and features an inventory of ceramic and glass art from local artists such as Kazuki Takizawa, Brian Rochefort, and Siemon & Salazar.

Each artist has a distinctive style and aesthetic:

• Kazuki Takizawa is a Japanese glass artist based in Los Angeles, CA. He has various platters, bowls, and stemware available for sale from his studio KT Glassworks.

• Brian Rochefort is a Los Angeles-based artist who makes unique ceramic sculptures based on volcanoes. 

• Siemon & Salazar is a glassblowing design studio in Laguna Beach, CA founded by Caleb Siemon and Carmen Salazar. They make various vessels and light fixtures to order as well as offer a mix of pieces that are currently in stock at their studio.

I wanted the site to have a clean, modern, and polished look that showcases the quality of the ceramic and glass pieces and lets the user learn about some local artists and easily navigate through the site to successfully make a purchase. I utilized Bootstrap for its responsive grid system and components and used MySQL as the database to hold the product information.

The home or “Shop” page displays a grid of pieces available to purchase. Users are able to input the quantity of pieces they would like to purchase. Clicking on the “Add to Cart” button will take the user to the “Cart” page, which displays the items in their cart and their total cost. After clicking the “Checkout” button the user will be taken to a checkout form where they can input their billing and shipping information. Clicking on the “Place Order” button will submit the form information to the MySQL database and a confirmation message will appear. The user will then be able to return to the home page.

The “Contact” button on the navigation bar takes the user to the footer of the page which displays the store’s contact information and address.

The “Artists” page contains brief biographies for the featured artists as well as any relevant studio videos or artist Instagram feeds.

Overall, I wanted the site to be an accessible way users can support their local artists.

DATABASE STRUCTURE

Using MAMP’s phpMyAdmin tool I created the “Locale” database with four tables: items, orders, customers, and payments.

The main or “Shop” page of the site pulls the item title, artist name, item price from the items table and displays the item information in the corresponding artist’s section. Once items are added to the cart and the cart is checked out, an order is inserted into the orders table. The orders table holds the order ID, the items in the order, the total price, and the customer ID. The user can then cancel their order which deletes it from the orders table, or they can place their order. If all the form field validations pass then the customer data and order ID is inserted into the customers table, the payments data and customer ID is inserted into the payments table, and the customer ID is updated in the orders table.

FINAL DESIGN