HydraSearch Ecosystem

Overview

The HydraSearch Ecosystem is a trio of interconnected B2B portals for a US-based maritime and aerospace hardware manufacturer. The three portals (Main, Defense, and Recreational) share a product catalog of 9,500+ SKUs while serving distinct audiences with different purchasing workflows, multilingual requirements, and compliance needs.

Problem

The client needed three interconnected but distinct portals sharing a product catalog, each with different audiences, multilingual requirements (WPML on the Defense portal), and B2B-specific workflows like quote requests instead of direct checkout.

Off-the-shelf theme/plugin combinations couldn't handle the shared-but-distinct catalog structure or the quote-based purchasing flow. Every existing solution either forced a single portal design across all three brands or required duplicating product data across separate WordPress installs.

Approach

Built a custom theme (internally "RHY-Theme") from the ground up with a dedicated template hierarchy per portal/brand (single-hydrasearch.php, single-aeroquip.php) sitting on a shared "Collection" taxonomy (taxonomy-collection.php) so product data stayed centralized while each portal rendered its own UX.

Rather than bolt on a generic WooCommerce cart, extracted a standalone quote/basket system into its own plugin (QuoteBasket Pro) with its own DB schema so it could be reused across portals and maintained independently of the theme.

Architecture

Product Discovery

ACF Flexible Content fields per product, filtered via a dedicated AJAX filtering plugin (ACF Flexible Filters) with Redis as primary cache and WP transients as fallback, using pattern-based cache invalidation (acf_filter_result_*) triggered on product/collection save.

Search

A separate Live Search Optimizer plugin handling relevance-weighted, AJAX-powered search across custom post types, taxonomies, and ACF fields. Customers can search by part number, spec, or model and get instant results with keyword highlighting.

Specs & Quoting

DOMpdf-based PDF generation plugin producing branded product spec sheets and quote documents on demand. Each portal generates its own branded documents while pulling from the shared product data layer.

Admin & Data Ops

A custom bulk-edit tool (Collection Bulk Edit Support) for managing the shared "Collection" taxonomy across thousands of products without manual per-item editing. This was critical during the initial catalog migration and ongoing remediation.

Asset Pipeline

Bash/ImageMagick script converting the full product image catalog from PNG to WebP to cut page weight ahead of launch. This automated the conversion of thousands of product images without manual intervention.

Results

• 9,500+ SKUs served across 3 portals from one shared data layer
• Product search/filter response time reduced from ~2s to sub-200ms via Redis caching and optimized meta-field queries
• Full WPML multilingual support on Defense portal with shared catalog sync
• Quote-based purchasing flow replacing direct checkout across all three portals
• Each portal maintains its own brand identity while sharing the underlying data architecture

Technical Repositories

The ecosystem is composed of several interconnected plugins and the custom theme:

• RHY-Theme -- Custom WordPress theme with per-portal template hierarchy
• QuoteBasket Pro -- Standalone quote/cart system with own DB schema
• ACF Flexible Filters -- Redis-cached filtering for ACF Flexible Content fields
• Live Search Optimizer -- Relevance-ranked AJAX search across custom post types