Background: Flowing Oasis is an in-person and online aquatics store that was founded in April of 2024. The owner, Nathan, is a friend of mine who has had this business since 2020. It started as Merman Aquatics selling tropical fish and aquarium plants with some koi and pond items. In 2022 his interests and business objectives changed to offer higher quality koi and pond products. This is when the business changed to American Koi Company which would offer imported Japanese koi and a wider variety of pond products. Nathan was about to close the business in 2024 because he had a full-time job and could not devote enough time to the company to keep it going. At this time, I was in the process of moving back to Pennsylvania from Florida and presented the idea of taking his business online and becoming a partner with him in it. This is when Flowing Oasis was created and would bring together our interests and passion for ponds and aquariums.

This new adventure allowed me to use and better my skills in web development. It presented challenges and solidified my interest in designing and developing online spaces. This page will outline and detail some of these challenges and how I would overcome them.

Challenge: Incorporating two stores on one site while maintaining their own identities and designs.

Resolution: Research the main header structure and mimic it to be an addable section to page templates. Edit CSS coding to update the design for each store and differentiate it from the main header.

Challenge: Uniquely display each store in a column container that originally did not allow for each column to be different.

Resolution: This required custom CSS to be added to the container on the homepage. Google developer console was used to decide where it needed to be placed and test each edit to ensure proper results.

Challenge: Displaying multiple social media accounts for the same platform. The original design only allowed for one account to be listed for each platform.

Resolution: Online research and other component files helped in creating a custom liquid component. Now multiple accounts can be displayed and added as the company expands or creates new social media accounts.