How Jake helps April save Christmas, brings joy to hundreds and honors a legacy in the town of Harmony Hollow

Notice: This article is completely fiction. No part of this shall be considered true. It is a written like a Hallmarkesque Christmas story. 

Every year during this time, I like to do something fun for the MainWP Blog. This is that fun article. Enjoy.

It’s been a tough year for April, a single mom of two sons in the small town of Harmony Hollow. She has an eCommerce store that hasn’t done very well. In fact, in the past few weeks, no orders have come through.

She was suspicious after a few days. Not a website developer. She was perplexed.

“I need to get to the bottom of this,” she said to Amanda, her best friend who helps her with her business.

“In a couple of months we will be in the holiday shopping season, where I usually make enough to close the year in the black,” she muttered.

Amanda has a friend, a guy named Adam, who runs the local car shop. Adam’s best friend is a web developer named Jake.

“Maybe Adam’s friend Jake can help you,” she said.

“I don’t even know who that is,” said April.

Jake is not a regular at Harmony Hollow town functions because he just isn’t that social anymore. After some terrible relationships, he swore off having too many friends.

“Do you have his number?” April asked.

“Sure, here.” Amanda handed her an old business card from Jake.

April asked Jake to meet him at the local coffee shop. The owner, Regina, is a friend of hers and she thought it would be a great place to feel comfortable meeting a stranger.

However, April didn’t know that Regina was also a customer of Jake’s. In fact, Jake manages websites for several businesses in town, including Regina’s and Adam’s businesses.

Jake has a few hundred sites, many of which are in the town (name) and he uses MainWP as a centralized dashboard to keep up with all the websites. It streamlines his time and allowing him to serve more clients.

So April and Jake met. Jake noticed a business owner who was a little desperate, but she was warm and smart.

He felt a connection. He felt like she was the kind of business owner he likes to do business with.

So he agreed to help and told her how much it would be to get started. April stared at the number and wondered if she could cover the cost. However, with the Christmas shopping season approaching, it was imperative she got her site running correctly.

She was losing sales!

Jake got to work and cleaned up the database, optimized the speed and corrected the notifications problem April had with her orders. She actually had a few pending orders she was able to fill!

He made a backup, created a staging site and did a complete audit of the website. He discovered a few other issues that the website needed fixed.

Meanwhile, April was concerned about selling items for Christmas. That’s when Regina told her about Mr. Weir.

Mr. Weir was an older gentleman in town that everyone loved. He was wise and people frequently asked his advice.

It turns out for the past decade he has been creating Christmas ornaments in memory of his late wife.

She loved Christmas ornaments and children. He even volunteered at the local children’s home in memory of his wife.

He had thousands of ornaments and nothing to do with them. He had approached Regina about selling some in her coffee shop.

Regina thought it would be a great item for April to sell on her website. Mr. Weir agreed. His ornaments, in his wife’s memory, would be sold on April’s website for the holidays.

April’s friend Amanda wrote descriptions for the ornaments and a few stories about Mrs. Weir as told by Mr. Weir to explain the significance of the ornaments.

With Jake’s help, she began adding the custom made ornaments to the website along with Amanda’s stories and descriptions. They added approximately 500 ornaments for the first round of sales.

April and Amanda held a launch party at the coffee shop, complete with Mr. Weir, who told more stories about his wife and her love for children and ornaments. April donated 10% of the profit from the sales of the ornaments to the local children’s shelter.

With the website working correctly, they launched the new line of ornaments.
The next morning, April noticed something.

She noticed something so wonderful and could not believe her eyes!

She immediately called Amanda.

“You won’t believe it! We have over 200 orders for the ornaments,” she exclaimed.

Amanda smiled.

“Of course I believe it! It is a Christmas miracle. Everything came together, just as it should.”

“And I have you and Jake to thank for this. Without your help, I don’t know where I would be.”

“So go tell him,” Amanda said.

April showed up that night at the town Christmas party, hoping to celebrate a miracle for her and her business.

To her surprise, Jake showed up, too.

“I thought I would give people another chance,” Jake told April. “After all, I met some wonderful people in the past few days.”

“Including me?” April asked.

“Especially you,” he replied.

The two smiled and embraced.

And with that, Jake helped save Christmas for April, bring holiday magic to the town, and honored the legacy of Mrs. Weir.