FreeBird Fitness Studio in Brentwood, TN was started in 2015 by owner Danielle Whitener. She originally came to another Nashville web dev agency for her original site development, but it just so happened that, at the time, D’nelle Dowis was working there as project manager. When that agency closed their doors, Danielle reached out to Berry Interesting for ongoing WordPress support. Over the years, we made some tweaks and resolved some theme errors, but the fun really started in 2020, right around the time that Novo Fitness was building out their Novo On Demand platform.
Adding video on demand to WordPress
FreeBird was facing the same challenges as Novo; without the ability to hold in-person classes, they needed a way to reach their students virtually. Luckily, since we were already building an On Demand solution for Novo, much of the research and planning was already done. The challenge for FreeBird was making the back-end development work with the site’s active theme, “Meridian Fitness”. Whereas Novo was built on our preferred builder, Elegant Theme’s Divi, the FreeBird theme was chosen before BIPi got involved, and required heavier developer involvement.
Click on the thumbnails to see images of the components of FreeBird Fitness’ On Demand content.
Much of the rest of the work mirrored Novo’s solution; using Vimeo Premium and the WordPress plugins Import Users, Peter’s Login Redirect, and Restrict User Access, we were able to quickly launch FreeBird’s Video on Demand classes, right on the heels of Novo’s launch.
The ongoing benefits of adding an online component to fitness studio classes
While the Meridian Fitness theme has given us some speed bumps along the way, thankfully the theme developer has provided us with excellent ongoing support, and with FreeBird taking advantage of BIPi’s WordPress support plan, any time a concern arises we’re able to resolve it quickly and keep serving up video classes to FreeBird students.
The studio now has an additional revenue stream that will continue to pay off even as lockdowns ease and students are comfortable going back to in-person classes.
The FreeBird Fitness website was built using the Meridian Fitness theme. If you’re curious about how Berry Interesting Productions can help your team build an outstanding website, we’re always happy to help! Drop us a line or book a consultation directly with our fearless leader, D’nelle. You can also sign up to get emails from Berry Interesting, and we’ll keep you in the loop.