Tehillim Kollel
A custom WordPress/WooCommerce membership site where supporters choose a subscription plan, submit prayer requests in Hebrew, and check out — with renewals that follow the Hebrew calendar instead of a flat monthly cycle.
WordPress engineer — theme & WooCommerce
Special Offer!Reb Shimon's Tzion
A daily minyan of tehillim said at the holy resting place — on behalf of every supporter and the names they submit.
The Meron Minyan
Established to keep tehillim said without interruption, day after day.
Kollel Meron At Tzion Harashb"Y
Daily Minyan at Tzion Harashb'y.
Your subscription is managed with the highest level of confidentiality.
Where it started.
The organization needed more than a brochure site. Supporters had to understand the services, choose a subscription or donation plan, and — the unusual part — submit the names and requests the prayers are said for, often in Hebrew, right alongside the purchase. Standard WooCommerce doesn't do any of that out of the box.
And the timing didn't fit a normal store. These subscriptions are tied to the Jewish calendar — a plan might renew before Erev Rosh Chodesh, or run “Nisen till after Lag B'Omar” — dates that don't line up with a flat monthly billing cycle. WooCommerce Subscriptions assumes a fixed interval; the real behavior is lunar.
So it needed a genuinely custom store: bespoke product and checkout flows, Hebrew-aware forms, and subscription logic that actually understood the Hebrew calendar — wrapped in a warm, branded site that also told the organization's story.
How I thought about it.
I built it as a custom WordPress theme on top of WooCommerce, overriding the product and checkout flows rather than fighting the defaults. The product page became a focused subscription chooser — variations rendered as clean plan options, with prayer-request fields (name, mother's name, the request) and a virtual Hebrew keyboard for entry — and the cart behaves like a one-item membership signup, not a shopping basket.
The interesting work was the calendar. For flagged plans, the theme calls Hebcal to compute the upcoming Erev Rosh Chodesh, stores the values in the WooCommerce session, and updates WooCommerce Subscriptions' next-payment date on creation and on each scheduled renewal — so billing actually follows the Hebrew calendar. Around that I layered UTM attribution into order meta, ACF-driven per-product receipts, and a GitHub Actions deploy hook into the live theme.
The thing itself.
Special Offer!Reb Shimon's Tzion
A daily minyan of tehillim said at the holy resting place — on behalf of every supporter and the names they submit.
The Meron Minyan
Established to keep tehillim said without interruption, day after day.
Kollel Meron At Tzion Harashb"Y
Daily Minyan at Tzion Harashb'y.
Your subscription is managed with the highest level of confidentiality.
- WooCommerce subscription storeCustom product and checkout flows, a one-item membership cart, and “Subscribe” language — a focused signup, not a shopping basket.
- Plan chooserWooCommerce variations rendered as clean plan options (40 days, 1 month, 6 months, full year), with recurring vs one-time handling and live pricing.
- Hebrew prayer-request fieldsPer-subscriber name / mother's name / request fields with validation and a virtual Hebrew keyboard for entry.
- Hebrew-calendar renewalsA per-variation “renew before Erev Rosh Chodesh” flag uses Hebcal to set WooCommerce Subscriptions' next-payment date — billing follows the Hebrew calendar, not a flat month.
- Checkout customizationFlux Checkout tweaks, password gating, card last-four captured to order meta, and dynamic payment-button text.
- Attribution + ACF receiptsUTM source/medium/campaign saved to order meta for admin, and per-product thank-you/receipt content driven from ACF fields.
What changed.
Supporters go from reading about the service to choosing a plan, entering their requests in Hebrew, and checking out — all in one site.
Subscriptions for flagged plans renew on the Hebrew calendar, before Erev Rosh Chodesh, instead of a fixed monthly date.
Staff see campaign UTM attribution and card last-four on each WooCommerce order, and receipts can be tailored per product from ACF fields.
Stories, campaigns, and a video gallery keep supporters engaged — with a deploy hook that pulls main straight into the live theme.
Outcomes are qualitative — no client metrics shown.
Under the hood.
Got a process that
should run itself?
Tell me where the work piles up. I'll show you what a calmer, quieter version of it looks like — built around how your team already works.