A few years ago I worked with a local hookah bar owner to start selling his hookahs and accessories online. The site started out pretty simple, but my buddy Colin got on board and the project evolved into a kind of crazy mix of ZenCart and WordPress. A redesign was long overdue, and here’s the new look.

Big versions of the other banner images:
Mya Diva Version
Shisha Close-Up Version
Mya Nile Version
Mya Vortex Version
Mya Bambino Version
Golden Layalina Version

Unlike the current design, the new setup will downplay the social/blog element and stress that yes, we do in fact sell things. I’m going for a simpler, cleaner interface that highlights the featured products in a more artistic way. The real stumbling block has been the original photograpy; most hookah and shisha suppliers don’t provide decent images of their products, so we had to do a lot of our own image work.

On the plus side, it’s been a lot of fun getting into the photography. I built a photo stage inspired by this tutorial by Davide Guglielmo. That guy is awesome. His stock photography is amazing and he posts a lot of it free-to-use.

My take on his stage uses a 36×48 sheet of Lexan instead of plexiglass, and the frame is made out of 2×4 connected with wood screws and steel joiners instead of free-standing particle board. I decided to use Lexan because it’s much stronger, and flexible enough to bend into a curve while only needing a few anchor points to keep its shape. Unfortunately, a sheet that big was nearly $70, but I think the increase in material cost was worth it. The result was a large, lightweight stage about 36x30x30. Here are a few really bad pictures I snapped with my phone:

Crappy photos of a photo stage? HAHA! Irony.
Here’s a shot of it in action with the SLR:

Eventually, something resembling the design above will appear here:
Hookah.WS [link]

In the mean time, enjoy this nifty article I wrote about how to use a hookah. The photos in that article are courtesy of Colin. He’s got mad skills.