A South Florida pet adoption site and pet supply shop in one: browse more than 2,000 adoptable dogs and cats from local shelters and rescues, then shop a starter kit for the pet you fell for.

Overview

The idea

Adopting a pet in South Florida usually means checking a dozen shelter and rescue websites, each with its own layout and its own search. Then, once you’ve found the one, you start over at a pet store. SoFlo Pets puts both in one place: every adoptable dog and cat in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, and the supplies to bring them home.

We built it as our own product to show what a custom WordPress build can do when it pulls live data from outside services and runs a store on top of it.

Live adoption listings

The pets come from RescueGroups.org, the database many shelters and rescues already use to publish their animals. Our plugin pulls in more than 1,000 dogs and 1,100 cats from 31 local organizations and keeps them current, so a pet that’s been adopted drops off the site on its own.

Shelter data is written for intake, not for browsing, so the plugin tidies it up before anyone sees it. Pets listed only by an intake number or a placeholder like “Unknown” are skipped. Names typed in all capitals are set in normal case. Each county is worked out from the shelter’s city and ZIP code so the county filter actually works.

Browsing is quick by design. Photos are cropped to the same size so the grid stays tidy whatever the shelter uploaded. “More pets” loads the next set in place instead of reloading the page. The home page shows a different mix of dogs and cats on every visit. Visitors can heart pets to save them for later.

Pet profiles that lead to adoption

Each pet has its own page with the shelter’s description, the details adopters ask about first, and who to contact. The “Apply to adopt” button goes straight to that shelter’s own application. SoFlo Pets never stands between an adopter and the shelter.

Below the profile, a starter kit banner shows the bed, bowls, toys and grooming gear for a pet’s first week home, matched to whether it’s a dog or a cat. That’s where the adoption side and the shop meet.

A shelter directory that builds itself

The Shelters & Rescues page lists every organization with pets on the site, grouped by county, with how many pets each one has listed and a link to its website. It’s generated from the same data as the listings, so a new rescue appears as soon as it posts its first pet.

A store with no inventory

The shop sells beds, bowls, toys, grooming tools and travel gear through CJdropshipping, using our own connector plugin. It imports products, rewrites the titles and descriptions to read like a real store, applies our pricing rules, and syncs stock and prices every day. When an order is paid, the connector can place it with CJ automatically and email the customer their tracking number when it ships.

Checkout runs on WooCommerce and Stripe, with cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, Florida sales tax, and free shipping over $35.

Built to be found

Every pet profile is its own page in search, with a title like “Frankie, American Bulldog Mix Dog for Adoption in Miami”, a description written from the pet’s details and the pet’s photo for social shares. Filtered and paged versions of the listings are kept out of search results so Google spends its time on the pets themselves.

Designed for phones first

Most people browse adoptable pets on their phones, so every page was designed for a small screen first: big photos, thumb-sized buttons and a search that fits above the fold.