TraderShark
Day-trading education for S&P Emini, Euro, Crude and Gold futures: a members-only area with client login, a live trading room called the Shark Den, trading manuals, video lessons and a members forum.
Overview
TraderShark was a membership site for day traders learning to trade futures, built around the E-mini S&P 500 and later also covering Euro, crude oil and gold futures. The business sold trading manuals, indicators and coaching, and its core product was the Shark Den, a live trading room with daily commentary for subscribers.
The site ran on WordPress with a custom theme. Visitors could register, recover a password and start a free trial; members entered separate S&P and crude oil Shark Den rooms and joined a members forum. A learning center carried a new-trader guide, FAQs, a reading list, a daily trading video archive and a free profit and loss calculator spreadsheet.
The Web Archive shows the WordPress site from late 2011 to mid 2020. The 2011 version used a custom theme with Flash elements, a blog, news and a forum; by 2018 it had moved to a new custom theme with a larger members area, product and legal pages, and embedded YouTube and Vimeo video. The business has since closed and the site is offline.
What was built
- A custom WordPress theme, replaced by a new custom theme by 2018, with dropdown navigation across the learning center, members area, products and about sections.
- Member registration, login and lost-password flow, a free trial page and a Shark Den subscription page.
- Members-only entry pages for the S&P and crude oil Shark Den trading rooms.
- A members forum with its own about page and forum subscriptions.
- A learning center with a 38-step guide for new traders, FAQs, a reading list and an archive of daily trading videos.
- Product pages for trading manuals, indicators, coaching and free offers, plus testimonials, performance and support provider pages.
- Contact and information request forms with CAPTCHA protection.
- Risk disclosure, user agreement and privacy policy pages.
Stack
Frontend
- Custom theme
- Two generations of a site-specific WordPress theme, 2011 and 2018 onward
- jQuery
- Menus, lightbox and interactive elements in the theme
- Colorbox
- jQuery lightbox plugin for image and media overlays across the site
Integrations & Payments
- YouTube
- Embedded video playlists and a TraderShark channel link
- Vimeo
- Embedded video player on the homepage of the 2018 and 2020 site versions
CMS & Commerce
- WordPress
- Pages, posts and member accounts for the whole site from 2011 to 2020
- Members area and client login
- WordPress registration and login gating the Shark Den rooms and forum
- Forum Server
- WordPress plugin running the members forum, with forum subscriptions for members
- Contact Form 7
- Contact and information request forms, alongside Custom Contact Forms
- SI CAPTCHA
- CAPTCHA protection for WordPress registration, login and contact forms
- Dropdown Menu Widget
- Multi-level dropdown navigation for the larger menu of the 2018 theme
- Quick Page/Post Redirect
- Page redirects managed from inside WordPress without server configuration
Engineering highlights
The members area grew from a single Shark Den in 2011 to separate S&P and crude oil rooms by 2018.
The site was redesigned onto a new custom theme while keeping the same product structure: the Shark Den, manuals, forum and learning center all carried over.