Digital Infrastructure Modernization: DNRS

The Challenge

Prior to this modernization, the DNRS digital platform hinged on monolithic architecture that impeded business growth:

• Tightly Coupled Architecture: Marketing content, payment processing (WooCommerce + Moneris), learning modules (LearnDash), and contact synchronization (WP Fusion) lived on a single WordPress instance, creating manual customer management and performance bottlenecks.

• Complex Multi-Platform Ecosystem: The business depends on disconnected platforms (Ontraport CRM, Acuity scheduling, UpPromote affiliate marketing and NING community forums) with virtually no interoperability.

• Rigid Commerce: The legacy setup could not easily support bundling, tiered subscriptions, or complex discounting models. Customer course access was difficult to enforce.

• Data Integrity: Webhook and sync failures between payment gateways and downstream CRM records caused errors in user entitlements, requiring manual intervention.

• Massive Legacy Data Estate: Over 34,000 accounts with varying historical progress across multiple course versions needed migration without disrupting ongoing access.

The Solution

9thCO designed and deployed a headless, microservice-inspired architecture where each system is responsible for its core functionality:

Integrated Components

• Headless Storefront & App

  • Built on Next.js (App Router), TypeScript and Tailwind CSS.

  • Manages headless e-commerce cart via Shopify Storefront API.

  • Server-side form validations using Zod and React Hook Form.

  • Internal app functionality, including custom account dashboards and reconciliation suite.

• Content Management (Storyblok)

  • Manages marketing content, landing pages and course promotional material.

  • Integrates the Storyblok Shopify V2 App, enabling content editors to select Shopify products within Storyblok components without duplicating commerce data.

• Commerce Engine (Shopify)

  • Manages products, collections, inventory and hosted checkout.

  • Recurring subscriptions via Shopify Subscriptions and Shopify Flow workflows.

  • Emits transaction webhooks to enable fulfillment and entitlements.

• System of Record (Ontraport)

  • Central authority for customer profiles, purchases and access tagging.

  • Stores credentials securely using bcrypt hashes within custom fields.

  • Custom Objects (e.g. Purchases) maintain complete historical order context.

• Learning Management System (Decoupled LearnDash)

  • WordPress was decoupled and isolated strictly as an LMS host.

  • Course access is governed by an automated Auth Bridge (SSO) rather than native and separately managed WordPress login.

• Resource Scheduling (Acuity)

  • Built a custom booking UI in Next.js that interacts with three custom API routes, allowing users to browse coach availability directly on the site.

• Affiliate Tracking (UpPromote)

  • Affiliate tracking with migrated affiliate data and coupon management.

• Email Distribution (Mailgun)

  • Transactional security emails and operational reconciliation reporting.

• Analytics (GTM + GA)

  • Clear event segmentation, distinguishing headless storefront events from Shopify checkout.