AxomPot: Engineering a Custom Live Tea Auction Bidding Portal & Management Engine
Designed, engineered, and deployed a high-performance B2B Tea Auction and Live Bidding Portal from scratch on WordPress. Built a custom lightweight PHP & MySQL engine bypassing slow, bloated third-party plugins to process thousands of live bids with low latency.
Client
Amit Bhadu Tea Manufacturer
Role
Lead Full-Stack WordPress Core & Custom Plugin Developer
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Website
Visit Live"B29 Technology built us a custom B2B bidding engine that replaced our manual sheet-based headaches. The system's ability to handle base rate ranges, searchable filters, and bulk admin operations is incredible. Our clients can bid on thousands of lots instantly."
The Challenge
B2B Tea Auction operations are historically complex, relying on manual calculations, spreadsheet handovers, and slow physical bids. The client needed a system where verified tea buyers could register, log in to a secure dashboard, browse thousands of tea lots, request physical samples, track courier details, and place live bids under strict sale cycles. The system had to support alphanumeric base rate ranges (e.g. ₹250-300) instead of flat prices, allow multi-select searchable filters so users didn't have to hold Ctrl keys on desktop, and include a full admin dashboard to manage, filter, bulk-delete, and close sales with auto-calculating winner resolutions—all running flawlessly on low-bandwidth networks in remote tea gardens.
The Solution
We developed a completely bespoke WordPress Plugin and Database Schema from scratch. Schema Customization: Converted the base_rate database column dynamically to a varchar(50) format to seamlessly store and parse pricing ranges like '250-300' and wrote custom SQL substring cast logic (CAST(SUBSTRING_INDEX(base_rate, '-', 1) AS DECIMAL(10,2))) to handle min/max range boundaries. Bulk CSV Parser: Engineered a high-speed parser in PHP to upload 5000+ lots in seconds without server timeouts, auto-cleaning duplicate index entries. Searchable Checkbox UI: Replaced default multi-select browser fields with beautiful, interactive search filters using vanilla JavaScript to filter Grade, Garden Marks, Region, and Broker options instantly. Bidding Logic: Built a real-time bid resolution engine that automatically determines top bids, flags client accounts, and allows administrators to bulk-action status changes (Open, Closed, Sold, Unsold) or perform single/bulk lot deletions safely without database locks. Security & Stability: Addressed PHP Fatal errors, resolved activation headers-already-sent bugs, and locked down admin interfaces with secure nonces.
Our Process
Dynamic DB Alteration
Modified the active WordPress lots database tables to support alphanumeric base rates while preserving historical pricing calculations.
High-Speed CSV Parser
Wrote a low-memory PHP file parser to upload 5000+ lot rows, validating unique Lot IDs and generating automated logs.
SQL Range Calculations
Created complex SQL substring queries to parse and evaluate string price ranges against integer min/max user filters.
Interactive Searchable Checkboxes
Replaced heavy plugins with a custom JavaScript client filter panel, making it easy to search and toggle multiple regions, grades, and brokers.
Sample Order Dispatch CRM
Integrated a tracking portal where buyers select lots to request samples, and admins update tracking numbers and status.
Bulk Resolution Controls
Developed admin panel action scripts to close bidding, reopen cycles, or execute cascading deletions on lots.
Conflict Resolution & Fixes
Resolved headers already sent activation conflicts and fixed user deletion Fatal errors using custom WordPress handlers.