The Pali Text Society is a non-profit educational charity, publishing Buddhist texts in the original Pali language, alongside translations, guides to the Pali language and commentaries on the original texts.
The website sells nearly 500 publications worldwide, so it was very important that the shop functioned reliably, including comprehensive shipping rules and covering EU VAT for shipping to European countries.
Some of the books are sold as sets, or as individual books within sets, with the option for hardback and paperback copies, so the shop needed to be arranged so these options were clearly shown to customers.
The shop was built using WooCommerce with a dedicated Shipping Rules plugin, using PayPal as the payment gateway.
It was important that the admin staff could fulfil the orders easily, so in the backend there are methods of exporting the orders as CSV files that can be sent to the shipping fulfilment company.
There are two tiers of membership with a percentage discount for each, so the cart needed to automatically add the discount when using a membership code.
The site also includes a donation form, with the option to make recurring donations.
The design is modern and responsive, so it works on all devices, but it incorporates fonts that can display the Pali characters, which hint at the ancient source while looking modern and easy to read.
We worked closely to develop a theme that reflected the ancient sources of the texts, which were scratched onto palm leaves dusted with charcoal. I used a subtle papyrus texture in the header and footer, with a soft cream coloured background and earthy tones for the headings.
I designed the logos to use the ancient Tripitaka symbol, but rendered in a modern simple style so the logos would still be visible clearly on mobile phones.
Visit: palitextsociety.org
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