Philosophy
A website can fulfill a wide spectrum of needs. It may simply serve as an enhanced business card, where customers and potential customers can connect with a business, or can provide services and functionality that help and optimize business operations.
Throughout my career as a software developer, I’ve built and managed projects for many major companies and organizations; Adobe, Microsoft, HP, and Disney to name a few. I’ve learned that bigger is not necessarily better, and believe it or not I don’t think everyone needs a website or internet presence. But if your needs have expanded beyond what’s available through social media and other low/no cost options, a website might be the right thing to increase your visibility.
WordPress has become my primary framework for website development. Building a custom website from the ground-up is great, but that can present challenges for managing and updating components in the ever-changing world of the internet, and WordPress has a great foundation and many free or low-cost options to customize sites to meet specific business needs. Since WordPress is so popular, there are requirements that should be met for any site – security, SEO, and performance to name a few – and there are many tools available that help meet these needs. I also follow stringent standards for site development and deployment to ensure that websites are built and maintained with the utmost quality, and my clients can rest assured that their customers and guests will have a great experience when interacting with their site.
My recent focus has been to work with businesses and individuals in the fields of music and arts. If you’d like my opinion or assistance in creating or updating your web presence, please fill out my contact form and we’ll get connected and see if what I offer is a good fit for your needs.
Here is a list of my current projects.
Jamco Media Albums WordPress Plugin
After building my site and working with other musicians on theirs, I came to the realization that the WordPress playlist functionality was limited, and wanted to enhance how an album or a playlist could be incorporated. I developed the Jamco Media Albums plugin to extend the built-in WordPress playlist feature, allowing the user to add detailed information about each item, including track descriptions, purchase/listening options, and other album details. More information on the plugin’s functionality is shown on the Jamco Media Albums Plugin page.
Client: Lynnette Thredgold
Lynnette Thredgold, a professional violin artist and performer, requested a modernization of her website to help attract new clients and highlight her music and live performances. This site uses a custom child them based on the WP Sierra, providing tightly integrated custom CSS to optimize performance.
Visit Site: LynnetteThredgold.com
Client: Johnni Aguirre
A friend requested help with their portfolio website. It was running on an old version of WordPress, was slow, not very secure, and ran an older unsupported theme. We worked together to come up with new ways to present some of her work, reviewed plug-ins and themes that would add desired functionality while maintaining the original design, and performed updates to many components, both those related to WordPress and to the hosting environment.
Visit Site: JohnniAguirre.com
Client: Daniel Barry
Daniel came to me in need of a refresh to his website, and I had been working on my own custom theme to use for my website, I this was a great way to develop the new theme while going beyond the specific requirements of my site. We also explored some cool plugins for displaying PDFs of his compositions, and photos from his music related travels.
Visit Site: DanielBarryMusic.com
Client: Washington Music Educators Association
Washington Music Educators Association’s website was in need of a well overdue redesign, and lacked functionality that would provide their staff with tools to manage things like online payments, membership, conference registration, exhibitor registration, and school/district data. Based on the Studio Press News Pro theme, custom functionality was developed to meet these needs along with many others. Maintenance of their site has been passed on, but the core functionality remains in place.
Visit Site: WMEA.org
Client: Jim Cutler
This is my personal website, using my custom theme along with my media albums plugin.
Visit Site: You’re already here!