Past Work

Let Grow was founded as a community for parents to come together around the idea of raising resilient and independent kids.

I built this site using WordPress in conjunction with BuddyPress (social networking) and bbPress (forum) to allow users to communicate and share online as well as connect in the real world.

The design is minimalist but modern, and communicates the mission of the site well while putting most everything a click or two away.

The site incorporates BuddyPress, which allows users to create profiles, add friends, create groups and send private messages.

Users also enter their zip code when they join so they can find other like-minded users in their area using the handy Friend Finder tool. While the site is mostly geared towards residents of the United States, there are currently users in Europe, Australia and South Africa.

Let Grow also uses bbPress for forum software, which like BuddyPress is full integrated with WordPress, and all users are shared across the three platforms.

It’s a very active site with a lot of traffic and engagement, and while credit for that goes mostly to founders, it’s a pleasure to build a site that’s so well suited to its audience and fills its niche so successfully.

Visit the site >>

 

One Purpose School is a public charter school in the Bayview area of San Francisco, the highest poverty neighborhood in the city. Their goal is to provide an innovative education and a path to college for their students in order to break the cycle of poverty.

But their old website did not adequately reflect these noble aspirations, and they were in dire need of a redesign. I worked with another designer and built their new site in WordPress using the Genesis Framework.

I like the full screen video on the homepage, and I think the (often overused) parallax scrolling design works well in this case to deliver their message visually.

We also made use of some professional photography of the school, which is very well done and adds an amazing depth and authenticity.

All in all, a great success. The website is well designed, well built, and authentically serves the objectives of One Purpose School and their audience. That’s the trifecta.

Blue Marlin Partners provides marketing and public relations services including media outreach, website development, content creation and social media strategy.

Earlier this year we began a redesign of their website. Using an excellent design by Anne Washmera, I built a responsive Genesis child theme to power the new site.

I like the clean design and iconography of the new site, and the expanded content provides a more comprehensive picture of the company’s services.

I also did some custom programming to enhance the functionality of the back-end management of the media citations and client pages. And, we accompanied it all with a migration from web hosting behemoth Blue Host to my current host Liquid Web.

All in all, a nice new look as well as some house cleaning for the new year.

Christi’s Green Cleaning has been providing healthy, eco-friendly house cleaning services to Santa Cruz and the surrounding area since 2007. I built her original WordPress site when she first started, but after seven years it was definitely in need of an upgrade and redesign.

Christi wanted a clean, responsive design that maintained the personal feel of her existing site. Christi’s Green Cleaning is a small local business and she wanted her website to reflect that.

In addition to the redesign, I did some optimization for local search; landing pages for specific service areas, citation building, a KML file and social proof by adding Yelp reviews to the sidebar.

I also coded a custom quote request auto-responder. Previously, Christi was taking the information for each Request a Quote submitted, manually calculating the amounts involved, pasting those into a Word doc and emailing it back to the prospect.

Now, the quote requests come in, are automatically calculated, formatted in an attractive email and sent back out immediately. That saves Christi time and frees her up to manage her business instead of spending time on menial tasks.

The result is clean and professional while keeping the personal look and feel Christi wanted. Most importantly, the website is well designed to support Christi’s business. The growing search traffic is funneled to the automated quote request form, and the website functions as a hands-off lead generation tool.

Check out the site below. Or, if you’re in the Santa Cruz area and looking for a house cleaning service, give Christi a call. She’s a great person and her team does outstanding work.

Education Week is one of many online products published by the independent non-profit Editorial Projects in Education. EPE actually dates back to the Sputnik era and anxiety over whether the nation’s youth would be competitive on the world stage.

Education Week won the 2011 Online Journalism Award from the Online News Association.

I helped Education Week with a variety of custom development on their WordPress based site, including building their event site for Scaling Up Student Success in 2012.

This event was a meeting of superintendents and other leaders in education to focus on effective education and improving student outcomes.

Education Week is a great non-profit organization for those who value education at all levels, and it’s great to support their mission.

Christi’s Green Cleaning is a house cleaning company in Santa Cruz owned by Christi Wilkinson. They specialize in using non-toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products.

They’re not only dedicated to using eco-friendly cleaning products, but they also make everything about their business as eco-groovy as possible.

I built their website when the business was first getting started. Consequently, there wasn’t a huge budget to work with. Fortunately, it’s amazing what you can do with WordPress and a free theme for very little money.

Since then, I’ve helped Christi with various maintenance and enhancements, improved her ranking in local search, and integrated testimonials and reviews.

Christi runs an admirable and solid local business which is a pleasure to support. If you’re in Santa Cruz or the surrounding area, I highly recommend giving her a call. You won’t be disappointed.

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