A clean cross-platform handoff for a heritage nonprofit's online store.
Migrated Bodie Foundation’s online store from Ecwid to Shopify, set up the shop subdomain and DNS, and verified SSL with zero merchant downtime.
PROOF SO FAR
A focused four-hour technical engagement. Stats reflect operational outcomes from the migration itself, not multi-month growth.
The situation
Bodie Foundation preserves the Bodie ghost town in California's Eastern Sierra, an authentic 1880s mining settlement that now runs as a state historic park. Its online merchandise store was on Ecwid and needed to move to Shopify, with the public shop link living at shop.bodiefoundation.org at delivery. The main site stayed on Squarespace. The work crossed separate platforms, with the registrar as the connective tissue and a small piece of plumbing required to wire everything together without breaking the rest of the setup.
This was not a redesign. It is a small, careful operations job. The public site, the shop, and the domain all had to keep working together so the foundation still read as what it actually is: a regional nonprofit tied to a real place. Plumbing work, treated with the same care as the page itself.
The work
Credentials and access intake
Squarespace, Ecwid, Shopify, GoDaddy. Confirmed scope, mapped how the handoff actually had to flow, and surfaced password issues early so they didn't sit waiting to derail the cutover.
Shopify subdomain and GoDaddy DNS
Added shop.bodiefoundation.org as a custom domain inside Shopify, then prepared the matching CNAME record in GoDaddy pointing to shops.myshopify.com. The new executive director ran the final DNS step with a five-minute step-by-step.
Verification and cutover
SSL provisioned automatically, the subdomain went live globally inside the hour, store link operational. The Squarespace site was untouched. Zero merchant downtime, start to finish.
Decisions that mattered
Decision 01. Don't migrate what works.
The Squarespace site was doing its job. The brief said move the shop, not consolidate platforms. A Shopify rebuild across the entire organization would have created a larger engagement without solving a larger problem. The studio kept the scope narrow instead. The foundation retained its public site, the merchandise store moved platforms, and a future rebuild remained a separate decision for a moment when it would actually serve the organization.
Decision 02. Cutover with zero downtime, not a maintenance window.
The new Shopify subdomain was provisioned and SSL-verified before the DNS change, then the CNAME was switched while the old store remained reachable. Customers did not encounter a maintenance window during the transition.
Decision 03. Documentation over dependency.
The original executive director moved on partway through the project. The DNS step was written up in plain language so the incoming ED could finish it without booking a second engagement. The handoff ended when the foundation could run the playbook themselves, not when the billable hours ran out.
What it moved
At delivery, the shop subdomain went live with full SSL and zero merchant downtime. The old store remained reachable until the new destination was ready to take over. Client feedback described the migration as having gone wonderfully and the working relationship with Alex as a joy.
What it set up
The handoff left the foundation with a working Shopify store, documented DNS steps, and a clean separation between its public website and merchandise operation. Any future website redesign or migration can be evaluated as its own project instead of being bundled into an unrelated store move. This focused engagement reflects the kind of technical stewardship the studio brings to nonprofit and heritage organizations.
The same migration discipline applies to B2B and SaaS websites where the rankings, traffic, and search value of the old site need to survive the move.
The migration went wonderfully, and Alex was a joy to work with.