About the client
Kaki.ro is run by Army Shop SRL, part of a group active since the 1990s in importing sportswear and casual clothing, later expanding into online retail through Kaki.ro and magazinuldetricouri.ro.
The challenge
In 2005 the e-commerce landscape was still immature:
- No reliable, off-the-shelf platforms.
- URL rewriting was not yet mainstream — Joomla and most CMSs still used id=123.
- Google had just started favoring what WordPress later branded as “permalinks”.
- The client wanted a site that would perform well SEO-wise, even in this early environment.
The solution
Kaki.ro was built on my existing custom e-commerce platform, developed in 2003–2004, which included features and solutions non-standard at the time:
- Masked files for SEO-friendly URLs → each category/product had its own “mask” file that parsed the URL and mapped it to the database ID (URL rewriting via .htaccess was not commonplace at the time).
- SEO-optimized image names → product images uploaded with descriptive, keyword-rich filenames (e.g. geanta-umar-molle-kaki-6510b.jpg).
- Clean, lightweight PHP code → minimalist and easy to adapt to new PHP versions.
- Solid database design → normalized schema with indexes, ensuring speed and scalability.
The results
Although the front-end has been refreshed over time — including a responsive redesign for mobile — the core platform remains stable. Remarkably, the site continues to generate sales nearly two decades later, even with minimal ongoing investment or dedicated management. This long-term commercial performance is the clearest proof of the solution's robustness.
