Portfolio

My First Website, multilingualmovements.org

When I was first approached to build this website, I had previously only built around 2 other sites using WordPress for free, for people I knew personally. This project, with its timeline of 'we need this done by the end of the weekend,' therefore, was a rather challenging experience for me. The organizers of Multilingual Movements didn't have much in the way of design inputs or choices, so I was essentially left to my own devices to design and build a full website from scratch. At the time, I did the best I could in the time I was given (i.e. about 3 days).

Now, looking back at it, there are some things that I would have done differently. For instance, I didn't have a chance to change the logo font to match the font I decided to go with for the website at the end, I don't love the color combinations for either readability or aesthetics, and I didn't have enough time to test the site on mobile. But the client was satisfied with the website (yes yes, I know, testimonials or it didn't happen, I'm still working on collecting those😸). I'm very glad that I was able to work with them, because I believe their mission is vital, and they deserve to get support to increase their capacity for running Language Justice Trainings from NGOs and grant foundations interested in improving linguistic access to their organizing.

My Favorite Website, mgaux.media

This website, despite still being unfinished, is probably my favorite website that I've worked on. The client in this case provided me a good amount of design input, and I enjoyed collaborating with them very much. I implemented custom CSS code within WordPress Kadence theme, using a child theme, to make the footer buttons work with the moving background that I chose.

Speaking of the background, I liked the background animation that I chose so much that I went and followed the tutorial that it was from on medium about how to make particle waves in Unity Engine, and the background that you see on my website is a result of my efforts to replicate the instructions in that tutorial. Unfortunately, my client, M.Gaux got too busy to finish the website. M.Gaux, if by any chance you're reading this, please let me know whenever you're ready to finish your website, I love the idea that you had of creating a platform for artists and writers to share their work and be compensated for doing so, and would really love to finish your website.

My First Website using Squarespace, brandymsilva.com

Silver Productions had unfortunately already paid for an annual Squarespace plan, and their refund window had passed. So, I designed their website using Squarespace, and for me it solidified an opinion that I already held that Squarespace's marketing campaign about it being easy to use is essentially a lie. While the drag and drop functionality is cool, the editor is Slow AF and also certain choices that they have made about where to put specific settings and options in the editor menu make no sense to me. There are also numerous things that my client wanted in terms of design and functionality that were simply not possible, or unnecessarily hard using Squarespace.

For instance, they wanted the heading font in the hero section to be more similar to their logo font. In order to accomplish this without changing EVERY other heading to have that same font, I had to go and look in the developer tools to figure out what Unique ID was assigned to that H1 tag, and then code custom CSS to change the font for only that tag. Meanwhile, on WordPress, changing the specific font of only one element takes approximately 3 clicks, and perhaps even less. Maybe there is an easier way to do this, but if there is, then why isn't it easier to find?

Anyway. I'm getting off topic. I'll save the rest of this rant about Squarespace and its many shortcomings for when I start a blog. For now, let me just say that it was a pleasure to work with Silver Productions, their filmography looks amazing, and I hope that they have great success in their endeavors, and to help with making the website aspect of their future endeavors easier, I will be rebuilding their website on WordPress when their annual Squarespace plan expires. Finally, not only does Squarespace suck as a website builder, it also have a very restrictive iframe policy applied by default, so I can't provide you a live preview here. Click here to go check out brandymsilva.com.

WordPress.com to Self Hosted WordPress Migration for ecovisuallab.com

When I found EcoVisualLab's Craigslist post seeking a WordPress developer, unfortunately they had already hired another developer, been ghosted by said developer, and built the website themself using wordpress.com, which is vastly inferior to self hosted WordPress (Why, you ask? YAY I get to rant! Click here😸). So, they were understandably cautious about hiring another developer who might leave them in the lurch.

To reassure them that I could recreate their vision exactly as they had already built it themself on wordpress.com, I first built the site using a free WordPress host. When they were satisfied with the fact that the design was copied precisely from what they had built, then I migrated the site to a subdomain on their hosting provider. Then, I backed up their old HTML website and delivered it to them in a zip file, and finally, when they were fully satisfied with the self hosted WordPress website, and understood how to update and change the site to their liking later on, we migrated the website again to their main domain. It was a pleasure working with them, and they even gave me a tip, as well as writing me a very nice testimonial that you can read below.

EcoVisualLab's Testimonial

"Finding a responsible, responsive web developer can be a challenge. And if you do find one it can be excessively costly. Rainbow Forge is a whole different resource. Reliable, cost effective and technically competent. Plus, they’re easy to work with. They did an outstanding job on our Website, handling design and technical challenges and a complex migration with ease."
Rick Colson
Master Printer/Owner
EcoVisualLab.com

Wix to WordPress Migration for ak0hli.com

Ak0hli.com was my first pay-what-you-can BDS Movement Solidarity Wix migration project. I quickly found out it was impossible to directly move a website from Wix (this is one of the reasons why I complain so much about closed, proprietary ecosystems like Wix and Squarespace). Essentially, the previously existing website becomes no more than a design guideline file, not much different from a PDF. Anyway, so on with the story. The client decided that because the website wouldn't exactly be getting a lot of traffic, nor need to be visible in search results, their priority was to keep the costs associated with it as low as possible. Therefore, I recommended that we use tinkerhost.net (a free WordPress host that allows for connecting a custom domain to your website for free) to host their site. Because on free hosting plans the host reserves the right to delete your account without notice at any time, I made sure to provide my client backup files for migrating their website, along with detailed instructions on how to use said files to migrate the site to another host. One thing that we struggled with was enabling SSL, due to tinkerhost's support for Cname record domain connection being new, and automatic SSL installation not being possible on tinkerhost. Despite the complication in maintenance that this will cause, I'm confident that my client will be able to handle it, and if not, I will always be here to help them figure it out. After all, if the result is that you get to host your portfolio website for free (the only cost they're paying for, and will pay for till the end of the world, is the yearly domain renewal price), and ALSO get the ease of editability that WordPress provides, wouldn't you?