Work / Case study 03 of 12 · Concept project
Lilac Hour
A concept WooCommerce store for a queer-owned adult boutique, built to show what high-risk e-commerce needs: age verification, discreet packaging and billing, regional product restrictions and a hosted card gateway with signed webhooks.
( The project )
Adult, CBD and other high-risk stores can't just install the usual apps. Mainstream payment providers won't take them, some products can't legally ship to some states, every customer has to be an adult, and most customers want the parcel, the card statement and the emails to give nothing away.
Lilac Hour is a self-initiated concept I designed and built to show how I solve that on WooCommerce. It's a fictional queer-owned boutique with a custom storefront theme. All the commerce logic sits in one plugin, so it can move to a real store unchanged. The products are illustrations and the payment processor is a sandbox.
What I built.
- 01
Age verification, twice
An entry gate on every page, then a date-of-birth check at checkout validated on the server. Only the result is kept on the order, never the date.
- 02
Discreet by default
Plain-box packaging option, a neutral card descriptor shown before payment, and neutral email subjects and sender name for discreet orders. The packing team sees a "Discreet" column in the orders list.
- 03
Regional restrictions
Rules like "toys can't ship to Alabama", set in the admin. They're checked on the cart, live as the customer changes their address at checkout, again on submit, and shown on the product page.
- 04
Hosted card gateway with signed webhooks
The integration pattern high-risk processors use: payment session, hosted payment page, and the order is marked paid only by an HMAC-signed webhook. Replays, stale or forged events and amount mismatches are rejected, and refunds go back through the gateway.
Checkout & payment.
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