Anonymized client · Event photography commerce
Turned a raw source handover into a product the owner could safely keep developing
A live event-photography commerce platform arrived from its previous supplier as a raw ZIP rather than a trustworthy handover, test environment, or release system.
What I inherited
The situation behind the visible symptom.
Source possession alone did not make the product operable. Event galleries, large image collections, products, cart state, payment completion, background work, and device-facing workflows still needed a controlled way to be tested, released, and changed.
I converted the archive into maintained software, established a controlled delivery path, handled urgent event work, and continued development through the product’s revenue path.
Specific work
Changes that moved the system toward control.
- 01
Created versioned repositories, an automated AWS container release path, and a separate Terraform-managed staging environment.
- 02
Kept the wider event-floor system operable: a Go Windows agent for drive ingestion, image processing, backup and synchronization; mDNS discovery; and React kiosks provisioned through Debian automation.
- 03
Maintained signed media processing and delivery through a TypeScript Cloudflare Worker, with Valkey queues and CloudWatch and Sentry visibility around the operating path.
- 04
Added guarded, batched cleanup for large event-media sets and fixed urgent gallery and upsell defects.
- 05
Continued through catalog, pricing, cart relationships, upsells, checkout completion, and order creation.
Technical ownership
The decisions were part of the implementation.
- 01
Turned the archive into maintained, versioned repositories with documented operating knowledge.
- 02
Connected Docker images, AWS ECR/ECS, and Terraform-managed environments into a repeatable release foundation.
- 03
Brought the Go Windows agent, drive synchronization, mDNS discovery, and Debian/React display path into the same operating model as the web product.
- 04
Separated destructive media cleanup into dry-run, confirmation, batching, queue, and progress stages.
- 05
Continued beyond stabilization into the catalog, cart, upsell, checkout, and order path.
Verified result
What the available evidence supports.
The business gained a versioned product, a repeatable route to release, an isolated place to test, a connected event-floor workflow, and a path to keep changing checkout and payments without depending on the previous supplier.