Boatzo Sailing Blogs, Boat Blogging Platform

Finally out of initial beta testing, I’m happy to announce Boatzo – Sailing Blogs & Boat Blogging to WP Cover readers.  While Boatzo itself is not related to WordPress (as the name suggests, it’s a blogging platform for boaters), the platform it is built on may look a little familiar.  That’s right, Boatzo is a fairly complex installation of WordPress Multisite.  So how does it work?

Boatzo uses a lot of technology and functionality from my Two Way Resume platform as the concepts are actually very similar.

What about plugins & themes?

Good question!  Boatzo utilizes two custom developed themes, one for the frontend facing site of https://boatzo.com, and another for the individual users site such as, https://boatzo.com/boatzocom/.  For plugins, most have been written custom.  Public or Premium plugins we do utilize are:

• Yoast SEO
• Advanced Custom Fields
• iThemes Security
• Gravity Forms
• WPMU Dev Domain Mapping

Outside of the above, we have custom plugins written for several of our integrations including:

• Stripe for payment processing
• Enom for domain registration
• Instagram (since they changed their API requiring an application)

The overall functionality of the site is pretty straight-forward.  When a user signs up, a new WordPress site is created for them and they are added to that site as an authorized user.  As a user registered on the blog, they can access the dashboard pages which allow management of the blog, creating new posts, and much more.  If a user decides to go premium, we leverage our Enom plugin and the WPMU Dev Domain Mapping plugin to register the domain on their behalf and then map the custom domain to the users blog.

Why did you create Boatzo?

Thanks for asking!  First, I love the water and boating is a big aspect of my life so anything I can do to make that activity more enjoyable for others I like to help out with.  Second, with my Dock Skipper platform assisting with the renting of private boat docks, I thought a second platform where I could interlink the users would be helpful long term.

How can I sign-up for Boatzo?

Are you a boater?  Sailor?  Fisherman?  I would love to have you on the Boatzo platform.  You can signup for free at https://boatzo.com/signup.  Feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback, I would love to hear from you.