A great photography website has to put your photos into main focus and allow visitors to get a glimpse into your photography style. That’s why you need to make sure that you choose the right theme for your website that will let your photos shine.
When it comes to WordPress, there is no shortage of quality free themes for photographers and in this post, we’ve compiled the best of them. The best part is that they are completely free to download so you don’t have to worry about spending any money.
If you’re looking for free creative portfolio WordPress themes, take a look at this post.
The Fullscreen theme uses a one column layout with a unique side-scrolling homepage. It allows you to create an unlimited number of galleries which you can use to showcase your portfolio. The theme is fully responsive, accessibility and translation ready, and easy to customize.
If you’re looking for a more minimalistic approach, the Tography Lite is worth considering. It features a clean design with plenty of white space, subtle animations, and a fully responsive design.
The Umbrella theme has a stunning full-width slider on the homepage which is perfect for creating an immersive slideshow that showcases your works of art. The theme is fully responsive and includes a powerful theme options panel.
The Editor theme is a great choice if you’re running a photography blog. The theme comes with beautiful featured images, two-column layout, and a custom social links menu.
Try the Magnus theme if you want your featured images to be shown in a bold and beautiful way. The theme is geared towards photobloggers and has a strong focus on typography. It’s fully responsive and easy to customize.
The Adler theme is a clean and elegant theme with full-screen header and full-screen featured images for every post. What’s unique about this theme is that it looks like a notebook, with handwriting fonts, which gives it a personal feel.
The Malefic theme is a one-page WordPress theme with a unique portfolio. It’s suitable for artists, photographers, and any other creative professional that would like to showcase their portfolio beautifully.
The Optics theme is a photography and blog theme that also comes with integrated eCommerce functionality. It’s a great choice if you want to sell photographs as prints or photography sessions.
The Fukasawa theme is a great choice if you want to showcase your photography in an organized fashion. The theme has a nicely organized grid layout and is fully responsive and easy to customize.
The Sider theme features horizontal scrolling so it’s definitely worth considering if you want to capture the attention of your visitors. The theme integrates with the Sell Media plugin and has a powerful theme customizer so you can customize every aspect of your website.
The Piroll theme is a great choice for any type of portfolio. It’s a responsive and elegant theme that has plenty of customization options and a plethora of portfolio styles. It’s also fully responsive and integrates with Mailchimp.
The Picletic was designed to facilitate sharing images from multiple platforms. It’s responsive and easy to customize. In addition to that, it was optimized for SEO and integrates fully with Google Fonts.
The Yuuta theme is a great choice if you want to create a visual diary. The theme can be customized using the built-in Live Customizer and is fully responsive.
The Fotogenic theme has a unique portfolio and gallery layout which make it a perfect choice for photographers. This theme is highly customizable and responsive and it also comes with 24/7 support and detailed documentation.
The AltoFocus theme has an elegant grid layout for the homepage which automatically adjusts to the width of the screen. It includes support for a social links menu and support for multiple post formats.
The Hitchcock theme has a grid-based homepage layout which puts your photography front and center. It also uses beautiful typography and has support for both classic and the Gutenberg editor.
The Carbon theme features a clean and minimal design. You will find built-in premium plugins, unlimited customizability, built-in mega menu, full WooCommerce integration, robust admin panel with hundreds of options, tons of useful visual page builder elements, and so much more.
The Rokophoto theme features a stunning full-screen image header with each post you publish. It’s a responsive theme perfect for photobloggers and has tons of customization options.
If you’re getting ready to launch your photography website or if you’re in a need of a redesign, choosing the right theme is crucial. The themes on this list are packed with features geared for photographers and they offer an attractive design to boot. They are also free so be sure to give them a try today.
WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories that are lesser-known.
Embrace Who You Are and Your Journey
In this People of WordPress contributor story, we chat to Tyler Lau from the US on his relationship building work in marketing and his WordPress journey.
Read on to discover his story which shows it is often what you have learned from negative experiences in your life that can make you a major asset to a product team.
An Entrepreneurial Mindset
Tyler recalls he always had a knack for spotting a enterprise ideas. As an industrious seven-year-old, he was already finding ways to make sales during the school breaks.
While many entrepreneurs have similar stories, Tyler’s path took many turns before he discovered and thrived in the WordPress community.
He was drawn to both the software and the community that surrounds it from his search for personal and professional freedom. He ultimately was able to combine his various business interests and people skills into professional marketing work.
Using your skills to uncover your journey
Tyler’s current role is as a Marketing Relationship Builder, based in Kansas, USA. His responsibilities span across all digital properties and products, leveraging his broad set of business and people skills.
These skills are amplified by his creativity and adaptability. Tyler says that one reason he is always looking for new projects is his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a diagnosis he received in 2005.
In an industry built by programmers and developers who often have a strong sense of focus, Tyler felt that someone with ADHD wouldn’t be seen as a natural fit. He found the WordPress community to be a place where everyone can find the right spot for their unique skills. Tyler’s skill is people, and this has translated into many opportunities and responsibilities in his work life. His skills have also helped him give back to the WordPress community as a speaker and volunteer, and through multiple contributor days.
Relationship-building as a career
Most of Tyler’s experience was in the restaurant industry, and his resume did not exactly point to a career in tech. But the service industry actually prepared him well for everything he has taken on since.
When he is at work events, he meets people from across the world and builds connections with them. As an extrovert, he enjoys this and couldn’t imagine a job where he was isolated from getting to know others and relationship-building.
Understanding people and being able to operate in any setting are key competencies. Social skills and tact are useful for community building in the WordPress space too, and in Tyler’s life at different times it has been necessary for survival.
The true meaning of freedom
In the WordPress community, the concept of freedom comes up often. WordPress is built on GPL, free software, and open-source values. Practically speaking, anyone can work remotely or be their own boss to gain more freedom in work and life. Tyler feels that he never fitted into a traditional work mould. With his strong focus on freedom, he found this resonated with the freedom and opportunities he believes WordPress provides him and thousands of others.
Tyler describes how in 2013 his ‘inner opportunist’ got him into trouble. After dropping out of college following a brain aneurysm, he needed capital to fund his first startup. He shares that he found a quick but unlawful way to make money. Alongside this between shifts as a waiter, he worked on prototypes for his first product. The company was growing fast, and to protect his patents and take research and development to the next level, he had to work hard. Everything came to a halt when some of the actions he took resulted in being sent to prison.
He says that meeting other inmates reminded him that he was in a much better situation than most. He was educated, well-off, loved, and knew he had a future once he was released. He found that many inmates never graduated from high school and were computer illiterate. While inside, Tyler taught subjects like science, math, writing, reading, and social studies. He found that due to the lack of skills and support, many inmates would struggle upon release. He believes getting the mental health support and job training needed to thrive after prison is not easy for many.
“There’s more to freedom than just being on the outside. You also need a sense of agency and enfranchisement,” says Tyler. He considered his sense of purpose and support network were plenty to keep him going and was ready to take on his next (legal) business challenge as soon as he could.
Going forward positively
The idea that your past doesn’t define you and you can choose to embrace it, is a key driver for Tyler.
He describes himself as an outlier in many ways. He recalls how politics influenced his life from the day he was born. Tyler’s father is a semi-dissident Chinese visual anthropologist, his mother is an art professor who left her home country of Japan to break free from traditional Japanese gender roles. Tyler feels he inherited a lot of this fearlessness.
“I’ve never fitted in, and yet this is what makes me able to adapt to most situations and relate to just about anyone. I embrace my eclectic, dissonant past and see beauty in the person those experiences shaped me to be,” says Tyler.
Now, he’s able to put those skills to good use in the WordPress community and beyond.
He says: “Regardless of your physical abilities, mental health struggles, upbringing, and even your run-ins with the law, no one is excluded from carving their place in the WordPress industry”.
Contributors
Thank you to Tyler Lau (@tylermaximus) for sharing his #ContributorStory.
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.
In this episode, Josepha explores the five groups within the WordPress ecosystem and provides a high-level example of how they interact and support one another. As always, stay tuned for the small list of big things and a contributor highlight.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!
In the first episode of this podcast, I said that there’s a lot that goes into WordPress, that’s really hard to see. One of the hardest things to see about the WordPress project as you get started is the overall structure. There is quite a bit of documentation that can clarify the basics: the names of teams, what they work on, and where, and when they meet. The way that they influence and support each other can really feel like a bit of a mystery. So today, I’m going to break down the WordPress community into five big groups; I want you to keep a couple of things in mind.
Firstly, these are high-level and based on my observations. Each of these groups can be further broken down into subgroups. So while you may not feel represented in this exact five, you are included if you were to dig a little bit deeper. The second thing to keep in mind is that the makeup of these groups is pretty fluid. Many community members find themselves in more than one group, but generally not far off. Some group two folks end up in group three, depending on the situation, people in group four can also end up in group five, and so on. As with so many things that I share, I’m not trying to insist that one size fits all. I’m not trying to put the WordPress community into a box. This is just a basic framework to understand how it all fits together. Alright, are you ready? I’m ready. Let’s do it!
Okay, I have a broad definition of the community, which I have mentioned before. I believe that the community is anyone who has interacted with WordPress, whether they know it or not. So, I’ll start from way out there and work my way in that first group; we’re going to call our Visitors.
Visitors are people who arrive at a WordPress site to gain information or engage in an activity. Sometimes they know it’s a WordPress site, but most of the time, they don’t. The second group are Users, people who use WordPress as their CMS. So, that’s website builders, website designers, small businesses, content creators, and the list goes on and on. The third group I like to refer to is the Extenders. Those are people who extend WordPress through the creation of blocks, themes, plugins, and more. There are also people who teach WordPress to others through WordPress podcasts, and newsletters and tutorials. The fourth group I refer to as our Contributors is the people who contribute to the open source software and the infrastructure supporting it, but not necessarily the same people who contribute directly to their own product. And then there’s group five, Leaders. Those are people who help drive the vision and strategy for WordPress; the most notable member of that group is of course, Matt Mullenweg. And I’m also in that group.
Each of these groups directly influenced the groups on either side. For example, a WordPress user is affected by both visitors and extenders. Imagine a content creator who shares their passion for photography through a WordPress site; this photographer may have visitors that need to purchase photos. In response, the user now has a need to make it possible for visitors to purchase photos on a site. So they go to what we consider the extenders, people who have built a plugin that supports that need. And as a result, that user can install that on their site. And they have have satisfied the need of the visitors to their site, the people who now can purchase photos.
There are a lot of examples like this in the WordPress project. Every small pattern that you see is mirrored in the larger patterns across our ecosystem. And every large pattern you see in the ecosystem can be seen among our teams. It’s pretty cool to look at really. So, why should this matter to you? From a very practical standpoint, this matters for anyone who’s trying to learn more about contributing to the WordPress project. These five groups mirror very closely the five steps of volunteer engagement that we see across the ecosystem and from a more philosophical standpoint, it’s just kind of nice to know who your neighbors are. Without the influence and support of the groups around us, it can be hard to know whether we’re on the right track or not. So take a look to your left and look to your right, and get to know your partners in this project.
That brings us now to our community highlight, the segment where I share a note about contributors who have helped others along the way, or WordPress success story. This week’s highlight is from @CoachBirgit, Birgit Olzem, a longtime contributor and a friend of mine. Her success story goes like this.
WordPress has allowed me as a mother of five to leave a toxic marriage for good.
Later, the community picked me up when I became seriously ill.
So I can say from the bottom of my heart, that working with WordPress has saved my life.
And now our small list of big things. I’ve got three things for you this week. I think that they’re all very important. And I hope you check them all out. The first one is a reminder that word camp Central America is coming up on April 15 and 16th. If you have not registered for tickets, you still have time, I will share a link to the registration page and the schedule in the show notes below.
The second thing on our small list of big things is that the Gutenberg 10.4 release is coming out later this week on April 14th. It’s an important release because it’s when we take a look at the current iteration of full site editing tools that we have, and decide if it’s ready to get into the WordPress 5.8 release. There’s a post that has a little more information about that which I will share in the show notes below as well. If you haven’t checked out the Gutenberg plugin lately, obviously I think it’s a good idea to do that in general, but definitely a good idea to check it out now.
The third thing on our list today is a reminder to check out our most recent block pattern tutorial, I’ll share a link to that in the show notes. It’s this kind of tips and tricks, tutorial, the “show me how to do it,” kind of thing in the style of CSS-Tricks. If you or anyone that you know might be interested in sharing a similar style of tutorial, there’s a link to a form in that show notes as well so that you can share with us your name and the topic that you’re interested in. We’ll take a look and see if it’s something that we definitely need to make sure our users know how to do. So, that my friends is your small list of big things.
Thank you for joining in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks!
When you need to find a particular company, product, or service online, where do you go? In all likelihood, you head straight to the Google search bar. And that’s what all your potential customers are doing, too, so you want to be sure your business is there for them to find.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the perfect avenue for getting your website to appear in Google search results. All you have to do is optimize your web content to satisfy Google’s ranking algorithms, and you’ll soon have a shot at appearing near the top of the results.
The trick, though, is figuring out exactly what it looks like to satisfy those algorithms. Even if you read up on some SEO tactics you can use, it’s still hard to know what they look like in practice. That’s why we’ve drawn up six SEO examples to help you understand what to optimize.
Read on for six of the best SEO examples available online, and then consider partnering with WebFX’s team of over 300 experts for our SEO services. Just call 888-601-5359 or contact us online to get started today!
WebFX delivers measurable SEO results
WebFX has helped us expand our digital footprint not only in Central PA and the mid-Atlantic, but also throughout the Continental U.S.
You may have read about things like keyword integration or mobile-friendliness before, but without context, those phrases may not have given you a clear sense of direction for your SEO.
Having some examples of SEO can help you see what various tactics look like in practice. To that end, here are six of the best SEO examples to inspire your own online marketing!
1. Long-tail keyword integration
Keywords are one of the most essential components of SEO. By incorporating keywords into your written web content, you can communicate to Google which searches your content is most relevant to, helping it rank for them.
Specifically, you should aim for long-tail keywords — that is, those that are several words long. Longer keywords tend to be more specific, meaning you can reach a more relevant audience and face less competition from other businesses.
Aireserv provides a great example of this in their content.
In one of their blog posts on cleaning air purifiers, they didn’t simply target a short keyword like “air filter” — they went after the long-tail keyword “how to clean an air purifier,” which they included in both the title and subheading of the piece.
As a result, their article holds the top spot in Google rankings for that keyword!
2. White space
Visual design is one of the primary contributors to the overall user experience on your website. If your site has a poor appearance, users won’t want to stay on it. And when users keep clicking away, that tells Google to rank you lower.
Visual design is composed of various elements, including everything from color schemes to page structure. But one of the main visual elements on a site is white space.
White space is simply the space on a page that isn’t taken up by text, images, or other visual elements. Imagine the difference between a page completely packed with text and a page broken up into small blurbs and paragraphs. Which would you rather read? Probably the latter.
Sun Auto Service demonstrates this principle seamlessly in their written web content.
In their informational pieces, they make sure to break up text into small sections. With headings, images, and white space inserted between the paragraphs, it makes things feel far less cluttered, leading to easier reading and happier users.
3. Compelling title tag and meta description
SEO starts with getting your content ranking in Google, but it doesn’t stop there.
Once your content is ranking, you have to convince users that your site is the result they should click. If you don’t, you won’t stay high in rankings for long since Google will assume your site isn’t valuable to users.
To gain clicks, you need to give each of your pages a compelling title tag and meta description, which together make up the blurb that appears in search results. The title and meta should make it clear what your business is offering and why users should click.
The Exterminator in Wyoming does a fantastic job with this tactic.
Their title tag makes it clear what they do and where they operate. Their meta description, meanwhile, provides a compelling call to action (CTA) and highlights their “years of experience.”
4. Reputable backlinks
When Google ranks your site, one of the things it considers is how reputable you are. If Google views your site as authoritative in your industry, it will rank you higher — and one of the best ways to seem more reputable is to earn backlinks.
Backlinks are simply where reputable sites in your industry link to your content. When Google sees a known authoritative site linking to you, it assumes you’re authoritative too and ranks you higher.
To earn backlinks, you can look for broken links on reputable sites in your industry and recommend that the site replace them with new links to your content.
Sweetwater offers one of the most impressive examples of SEO in this regard.
While Wikipedia links are NoFollow — which means they don’t directly impact rankings like most backlinks — the fact that Google consistently ranks Wikipedia so high in search results still benefits Sweetwater significantly, since visitors to that page may encounter the link.
It’s no coincidence that that same Sweetwater piece ranks on page one for the keyword “true stereo!”
5. Fast page speeds
Did you know that 83% of users expect pages to load in three seconds or less? If your site doesn’t meet this expectation, you’ll have quite a few users bouncing from your site — which will tell Google that your site isn’t useful to them, causing it to rank lower.
To improve your page speeds, you can implement techniques like:
You can check your website’s page speeds on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will give it a score between zero and 100. For an example of a site that’s managed to achieve an impressively high score, we can look at USA Flooring.
USA Flooring’s desktop site earns a 93 in PageSpeed Insights, meaning they probably don’t see many users jump ship during the loading process.
6. Responsive design
With over 50% of all Internet traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s no surprise that Google’s algorithms prioritize mobile-friendly websites. Without mobile-friendliness, not only will mobile users not stay on your site, but Google will penalize you in rankings.
To stay high in rankings, you should practice responsive design on your site. Responsive design refers to a type of web design where your site changes its layout to fit whatever screen it appears on.
One of the best SEO examples of responsive design comes from Ravensburger.
On a computer screen, Ravensburger’s online store displays their products in a grid formation, with three products per row. A phone screen is vertically oriented, however, so the store’s mobile version lists the products in a single column running down the page.
Independent research from Clutch has named WebFX the top SEO company in the United States.
Over 200 WebFX clients have been interviewed by Clutch to discuss their experience partnering with us.
Let WebFX optimize your marketing with superior SEO tactics
At WebFX, we understand the complexities that come with managing SEO — that’s why we’re here to help you optimize your online marketing in all the right ways! With over 20 years of experience, we know what it takes to get your site ranking in Google search results.
With our SEO services, you’ll receive help implementing every one of the tactics listed above and more. You’ll also receive a dedicated account representative to keep you closely informed about everything we do for your campaign.
To get started with us, just call 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!
Did you know that designers can use a tool that mathematicians, philosophers, and other academics have known about for hundreds of years? It’s called Occam’s Razor, and it’s a law that states, essentially, that the simplest solution is usually the best or most correct.
For example, if your client is late to a meeting, you would probably assume they got stuck in traffic. It’s a simpler and likelier explanation than, say, assuming they got temporarily abducted by aliens and had to fight through an endless maze of plant monsters to get to the meeting on time
That’s a prime example of the kind of over-thinking that many designers are prone to. We’ll go over the importance of ditching the unnecessary when developing design concepts, and why it’s so hard to do in the first place.
Not only will you be a stronger designer when you insist on simplicity, but your clients will be much happier with your work as well.
Here’s a scenario that I think perfectly illustrates how designers can use Occam’s Razor to de-clutter their designs. If you know me, you know what I’m about to say: something about food! Okay, so, you and a group of friends go out to eat at a buffet-style restaurant, and you begin piling up a huge assortment of food on your plate. Your friends are giving you funny looks, but you explain that you’re really hungry and will be eating a lot.
However, when you finally sit down to dig in, you get overwhelmed with the variety of options in front of you. Where do you jab your fork first? Decisions, decisions. Your friends are having no trouble polishing off their smaller meals and going to get seconds. It occurs to you that you didn’t have to put everything you were going to eat tonight on your plate at one time. There was a simpler solution right in front of you that you didn’t even consider. Oops.
Design works the exact same way. No matter what you want to accomplish in a design, there is almost always a simpler way to do it that will obtain the same result with less distraction and clutter.
Deconstructing a design concept to its bare elements, while still maintaining the integrity of the design brief allows you to solve clients’ problems with the power of economy. Always go out of your way to make things less complex, because…
Complicating Things Is Natural
I’m not sure why so many people think that simplicity or minimalism in design is easier to do than complexity. But it’s a pretty depressingly common thing for a non-designer to think.
I’ve personally worked with many people who just did not understand what it took to create a simple design layout. And I didn’t even try to strangle any of them. They say in entertainment that you can never be too rich or too thin. Well, in the design industry, you can never be too patient.
Back when I did the in-house grind, a co-worker once told me that whoever created the SPAM logo was: “just a slacker. I mean, how hard is *that* to pull off?” He was under the impression, like many non-creative professionals, that it was somehow “easier” to create something simple like the SPAM logo, because it wasn’t as complex as, say, directing a customer service staff of 50 people (he was a VP of Operations).
Getting A Close Shave
Having designed “simple” logos and directed staff teams, I can say with a fair amount of authority that, if you’re doing it right, the latter is far easier than the former, and here’s why.
As a designer, the most important thing you can deliver to your clients is a way to funnel their core values into a working system. That includes the visuals, of course, but visuals are almost near the bottom of the list for design requirements. Sure, anybody can put some plain text in a box. But the knowledge of whether or not that’s appropriate for the project you’re working on is what makes you the design expert, and not your client.
Always remind yourself that design is about solving a problem and communicating a core idea to your user. Whether it’s a squeeze page on a commercial website, or the can opener in your kitchen, all design should strive to use the fewest amount of elements to make the easiest user experience possible.
If you find yourself stuck in a heavy jungle of clutter, walk away for a minute and ask yourself what simpler way you can use to achieve the exact same effect you’re striving for.
Nature is predisposed toward complexity. That means that, in general, simple things get more complicated over time. Single-celled organisms evolve into multi-celled organisms, and so on. Evolution is not the most efficient designer, and sometimes nature’s solution to a problem is to just evolve something else to solve it.
Then, once the need for it is gone, it just sort of sits there. That’s why we have an appendix, tonsils, and other weird remnants of things we once needed for survival, but now… not so much.
And it’s not just us. There are plenty of examples in the animal kingdom of species that have vestigial, or formerly useful, limbs, organs, behaviors, and instincts. They aren’t useful anymore, but, thanks to Mother Nature (also known as the worst art director in the universe), they’re there to stay.
What this all means is that we humans are built from the ground up to take simple things and make them complex. Think about a nomadic people’s village versus a modern metropolis in the West or East Asia. Huge difference in complexity, but all human civilizations started out the same – very simple and basic.
To make something simple from something complex is against our very nature. This is why Occam’s Razor exists in the first place. William of Ockham, the 14th Century English scholar who first came up with the idea, knew that people had a tendency to think up fanciful solutions to problems that only needed a simple fix. Try this explanation the next time you encounter a client who doesn’t think design is a “real” job.
If you struggle with simplifying your designs, remember that it’s not really your fault. It comes with having a human brain and seeing things in many layers. But through your designs, you can constantly challenge yourself and your users to take the simpler road.
You won’t always end up with the world’s most elegant solution, and that’s okay.
But by reminding yourself that there’s always a way to do it simpler, you can ensure you’re always communicating the clearest message.
Imagine the excitement of landing a web design job at a government agency. It’s a fresh start and a chance to apply your skills towards public service. Feels pretty good, right?
Now imagine that, a few months into this new adventure, a global pandemic takes hold. Suddenly, you’re charged with building a website that puts critical public health information out to the citizenry. It’s got to be done right – and quickly.
This is the reality Andy Stitt faced in 2020. Just a few months into his tenure with the Delaware (USA) Department of State, he was named lead front-end developer of the state’s COVID-19 website. His job was to lead a team in building a WordPress website that would help residents access the information they needed to know.
Of course, the pandemic is ever-evolving. That means the website has had to keep pace. The details of virus testing and vaccine availability have been added over time. The work is never really done.
What has the experience been like? Stitt was kind enough to fill us in by answering a few questions. The following Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tell us a little a bit about your background in web design.
I built my first website as a bored teenager in 1998 and learned Dreamweaver in college in 2002. I then had an opportunity in 2008 to manage my company’s website using static HTML and CSS. I’ve held many different web-focused digital marketing roles since then, and I’ve been a full-time web developer since 2016. I spent many years as a solo developer for nonprofits, and now I happily work on a team in state government.
In 2020, you were hired by the Delaware Department of State – just before the pandemic. What was your initial role supposed to be?
My role was to be the lead front-end developer for the Government Information Center, Delaware’s internal marketing agency located in the Department of State. I was supposed to build and maintain WordPress websites for many state agencies across departments as well as municipalities.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, how did that impact your role?
We suddenly had to build a COVID-19 information website, and it became the bulk of my work for quite a while. I rarely worked on other website projects in the first few months of the pandemic. We had to put a few projects on hold due to our help being needed for a national emergency.
What was your first thought after becoming the lead developer for the state’s COVID-19 website?
My first thought was “who, me?” I looked behind me to see if they were pointing at someone else to take on the lead developer role, but there was no one standing behind me! Thankfully I had the front-end development and WordPress skills to take it on, and having a fantastic supportive team behind me sure makes the job much more doable.
What was the process for getting the site online? How much time did you have?
We had about 2-3 weeks. The funny thing is, I was only there for the first week of it. My wife and I had a pre-scheduled out of town trip for her to have major surgery, and then I needed to help her recover.
Initially, we worked with the governor’s office, public health, and emergency management to define the scope, information architecture, content, etc. We got approval to build a WordPress website so that non-technical people could make content edits on the fly if they needed to. The situation was so dynamic that we wanted to allow as much flexibility as possible.
Once we had the basic parameters defined, I created a layout wireframe for the website. Once that was approved, I handed it off to my fellow developers and then went on my trip. They built the website using our existing WordPress theme setup and reused branding from the Delaware Health and Social Services website. The branding allowed us to get a styled website up more quickly and gave it a cohesive look with our health department. We have since developed COVID-specific branding as we’ve gone along.
When I got back from my trip, they gave me the keys to the car, and it became my primary focus at work.
Beyond the quick turnaround, what were the biggest challenges you and your team faced?
The single biggest challenge was not knowing exactly what to do. The virus itself is a thing in nature that humans can’t control as much as we’d like. We didn’t know what exactly would happen, we didn’t know how bad it was going to be, and we didn’t know when it would be over.
So, to the best of our ability, we helped our team communicate information on statewide public health measures as quickly, accessibly, and accurately as possible.
In previous website builds that I was involved with, we had plenty of time to strategize. They were marketing projects with specific goals to increase leads and revenue. This website project was a leap into the unknown that had to be done urgently.
As the pandemic has continued on, were there any unexpected changes you’ve had to make to the site?
Because of the uncertain nature of the pandemic, I’d say pretty much all changes were unexpected. Two that come to mind:
There was growing demand for an easy way to find where you could get a COVID test near you. I had previously used Modern Tribe’s Events Calendar plugin, so I built a testing calendar with a searchable Google Map using that plugin. An external marketing agency that we work with then built a more robust user interface for it using VueJS (yay for headless WordPress!).
The other unexpected changes have been vaccine information-related. We’ve had to update much of that on the fly, based on when the vaccines became available for emergency use, different phases of eligibility based on how many vaccines were being distributed by the federal government, etc.
Having gone through this experience, what lessons have you learned?
I learned two main lessons:
Lesson one: I’m a solid front-end developer and user interface designer. Several months into the pandemic, we redesigned and redeveloped the website based on analytics showing what content people were looking for and public health’s priorities. I actually got to develop the website based on Figma mockups from our lead designer, and I got to make some design decisions along the way.
Imposter syndrome can be a bear, and being a solo developer for so long, I never really got meaningful feedback on my design and development chops from other designers and developers. I finally got that feedback from this project, and I take a ton of pride in the work that I did.
Lesson two: You can do anything with the right team in place. I went from solo developer for small nonprofits to lead developer for the biggest project of my career. I wore 10 different hats in my previous roles, but I couldn’t do that for this role.
Our department leaders maintain our relationships with our partners and manage the requests coming in. Our creative director and lead designer make sure everything is beautiful and usable. Our developers help me with my work when needed, troubleshoot technical issues, and build out API integrations that we have.
The best part is, we unconditionally have each other’s backs. I have the psychological safety to ask questions, ask for help, and make mistakes. With that kind of freedom and safety, you can tackle any task at hand, no matter how big. And this was quite a big one!
Thanks to Andy Stitt for sharing his story! You will also want to check out the slides from his WordCamp Philadelphia 2020 presentation on the subject. Be sure to visit Andy’s website and connect with him on Twitter.
Time to go old-school! Including retro fonts on your website can evoke a feeling of nostalgia. That old “eighties poster” look is very distinctive and easy to replicate with the right font.
If you’re ready to send your visitors on a blast from the past (or back to the future), try out one of these ten awesome retro fonts!
This font is awesome! It’s rare to see fonts with a gradient, but RM Serifancy pulls it off perfectly. The old-timey, western feel has a universal appeal. But this will work well if you’re going for something epic or masculine.
If you’re searching for a font that can best be described as “groovy”, look no further. Action Is is absolutely perfect for capturing that sixties and seventies vibe. The curvy, mixed-case font is completely non-conforming to the standards of typography, and that’s exactly what makes it so great!
Skinny, tall, and thin, this all-caps font almost seems to be yelling at you through the screen. This is great if you need something bold and artsy. The font comes in four styles that change the line thickness but still keep that distinctive narrow look.
For a font that makes you feel like you’re on Broadway, try out Showtime! This is certainly a unique decorative font. Just type what you want and use brackets on either side to enclose it, creating something like a lit-up banner at a movie premiere.
Want to create a feel just like a vintage burger joint? Try out this font! The hamburger craze of the 1900s stretches back all the way to the twenties and thirties, so this kind of font can help you craft a very classical feel.
MadisonSquare looks like neon text! If you’re creating something meant to look like an electric sign, you might want to try out this font. It’s definitely not something you’ll want to use for entire paragraphs, but it’d look striking in a logo or if used to call attention to a short piece of text.
Inspired by the 1968 Mexico Olympics (look it up and see the resemblance for yourself!), this stripey font comes with two styles: 3D and regular. Follow the link on the page and you can also find even more in the font family! You can use this font for free in graphics such as logos, but you will need a commercial web license to embed on websites.
Now this is a lively font! Budmo is covered in little neon lights – amazing if you’re trying to make people think of old-school Hollywood. There’s a ton of font styles in here: One dark, one light, two solids and one bulb style. The last three are so you can customize the font with layering. You’ll need a web license to use on websites, but otherwise this is free for commercial use.
Inspired by Kool Aid, this font is simple enough to work well in a lot of situations. It looks very much old-fashioned but doesn’t go overboard with it. Try using it in a logo if you want a bit of retro flair. However, brackets, parentheses and international characters produce dingbats that look like the Kool-Aid Man’s face, so this may not work if you need to use these characters.
Looking for something you’d find on the logo of a wine bottle? Try Coventry Garden. The all-caps font is designed so that uppercase letters create a cursive flourish. Definitely worth a download if you love this anachronistic, regal typography!
Old-School Web Design
Retro fonts may not be traditional, but that’s exactly why they can add so much personality to a website or graphic. Many fonts ditch unique designs for something simpler and more legible. But retro fonts’ bold blocks, bubble text, and sweeping cursive script take risks you don’t often see in typography nowadays. Give these old-school fonts a try and see how lively they can make your site!
