DogBusiness.co.uk

2026 · TypeScript, React 19, Express, tRPC, Drizzle ORM, MySQL, Stripe, Tailwind CSS 4

About This Project

DogBusiness.co.uk is the sister site of Dog Business School, both operated by Randle Stonier under Polka Dot Consulting Limited. While Dog Business School provides Ofqual-regulated qualifications, DogBusiness sells the professional documentation that dog care businesses need to operate compliantly and legally. Contracts, booking forms, terms and conditions, client onboarding packs, licensing application support documents, and operational guides, all tailored to specific types of dog business.

The product range covers five niches: dog walking, pet sitting, home boarding and day care, commercial day care, and kennels boarding. Each niche has multiple product tiers, from single starter kits through to complete documentation bundles and a Done-For-You service where documents are professionally branded with the customer's business details before delivery.

This is a full ecommerce platform built from the ground up. It handles product catalogues, payment processing, digital file delivery, customer accounts, a custom content management system, a database-driven blog, transactional emails, and lead capture. All in one codebase.

Why We Rebuilt

DogBusiness was previously a WordPress site. It worked well enough for selling a handful of document packs, but the business had outgrown what WordPress and WooCommerce could comfortably support. We wanted to build heavy custom tooling and open up for much more complex features in the future, and due to this we opted for a full rebuild to accommodate that.

The result is a platform we fully control, where adding a new feature means writing code rather than hunting for a plugin and hoping it doesn't conflict with something else.

The Stack

The platform is built on a modern TypeScript stack. React 19 on the frontend with Tailwind CSS 4, tRPC providing end-to-end type safety between the frontend and backend, Express handling the server layer, and Drizzle ORM over MySQL for the database. Payments run through Stripe, and the platform includes a custom CMS for managing products, content, and orders.

The type safety across the full stack is worth calling out. If a field changes in the database schema, TypeScript surfaces every place in the API and the UI that needs updating. On a platform handling payments and file delivery, that kind of safety net matters.

Product Architecture

The product catalogue is more complex than a typical ecommerce shop. Each niche has products in multiple formats.

DIY products are Microsoft Word documents that the customer edits themselves. These are instant downloads, available the moment payment clears.

Done-For-You products are the same documents, but professionally customised with the customer's business name, logo, and contact details before delivery. The customer submits their business details at checkout, the team prepares the documents, and the customer receives an email notification when their files are ready to download.

Digital products are interactive form-based workflows for businesses that want paperless operations. These are a newer product line, currently rolling out across the niches.

The platform handles the full lifecycle for all three formats: checkout, payment processing, file storage, fulfilment tracking, customer notification, and secure download delivery.

The Blog

The blog is database-driven and managed through the CMS. Posts are long-form, research-heavy guides covering topics like licensing costs, pricing strategy for dog care businesses, and DEFRA compliance. Several run to 3,000+ words with detailed breakdowns, tables, and regulatory references. These aren't filler blog posts. They're genuine resources designed to rank for competitive search terms and serve as a real reference for people starting or running a dog care business.

Each post has structured metadata covering SEO, categorisation, authorship, and review dates. Posts can also include FAQ sections that generate structured data for search engines.

Pre-rendering and SEO

The site uses a custom pre-rendering pipeline that generates static HTML for every public route at build time. Search engines and social media crawlers see fully rendered pages with proper meta tags, Open Graph data, and structured content without needing to execute JavaScript.

The redirect map from the old WordPress URL structure is handled server-side with permanent 301 redirects, so existing search engine rankings and bookmarks transfer cleanly to the new platform.

Security

The platform underwent a thorough security audit before launch, covering authentication, authorisation, input validation, session management, payment handling, and file access controls. All findings were remediated before the site went live.

Transactional Email

The email system handles order confirmations, account activation, password resets, and document ready notifications. Each email type has its own branded HTML template consistent with the DogBusiness design language, with proper domain authentication configured.

Ongoing Work

DogBusiness is an active, growing platform. New product niches are being added, the blog is expanding with new long-form content, and additional tooling is being developed to support the business as it scales. The platform was built to accommodate this growth without requiring architectural changes, and the work continues.