To give some sense of progression, here are some of the sites I have built presented in reverse chronological order.
Duathlon and Foyer des Jeunes
Two promotional sites for the village of St-Geniès-des-Mourgues near Montpellier, France.
Both sites were developed using a child theme of the Neve theme (free version).
The Foyer des Jeunes site uses a typical dynamic content structure with various post types, while the Duathlon site is more static, allowing for more customised page layouts.
100% my own creation with no help from a designer, the challenge for me was more about the aesthetics than the technical. Working in French was interesting too!
SuPWR
Promotional and communication site for Sustaining Power: Women’s Struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia (SuPWR), an ESRC-funded research project.
An entirely bespoke design delivered by a designer using many custom post types, taxonomies, and Advanced Custom Fields. Developed using the _s starter theme.
A curvy look to the site meant implementing unusual shapes while allowing for editable content within, particularly in modules like call-to-action sections. Adapting the standard layout of the Search & Filter Pro plugin (used on archives and search) was an interesting challenge too, especially with respect to accessibility.
CORE and Covid Collective
Promotional and communication sites for two COVID-19 research programmes commissioned by the Institute of Development Studies.
Two separate sites with bespoke designs delivered by a designer, but using very similar data structures built on several custom post types, taxonomies, and Advanced Custom Fields. Both developed using the _s starter theme.
The most interesting and fun feature to build of both sites was the Projects interactive map. Here I used the Leaflet library for the map and custom coded its integration with the Search and Filter Pro plugin so that choices in the dropdowns were automatically represented on the map.
KEEN Industries
One-page site for a start-up digital brands agency.
The goal was to emulate the look and feel of a selection of sites that the agency liked.
The original design was done in less than a day with a page-builder. Re-building it the traditional way in the block editor with a stylesheet took another whole day. The idea was to prevent future content changes messing up the layout, but I’m really not sure it was worth it.
Whole System Thinking
Corporate site for a small design and build construction company.
Converting the original site to a fully responsive layout while maintaining the look and feel. Developed the new theme using _s.
Building a custom theme from _s instead of using a child theme introduced me to the customizer and forced me to get a better handle on CSS.
Kiting Online
A travel booking site for kitesurfing and windsurfing holidays.
Conversion of the original site content onto WordPress to allow online bookings. Achieved with:
- WooCommerce
- A custom child theme of Storefront
- A bespoke plugin integrated into WooCommerce to facilitate pricing and bookings by date.
Such a pleasure to work with the WooCommerce plugin – hooks and filters just everywhere, making integration as straightforward as it can be.
Well Judged
Where amateur photographers and photography clubs could:
- Have their photos reviewed and scored by experienced competition judges
- Design and run intra- and inter-club competitions
Built to my own design. Too wordy, but the images made up for it. With custom database tables, user and judge scoring on competitions, and video and audio commenting, it was a steep learning curve for a first site.
