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Megan Garwood

web developer for brand designers

Gulp

West Trade Interiors

West Trade Interiors preview on tablet

Service

Development of a new WordPress website with a custom portfolio and some unique interactivity via modern CSS and JavaScript.

Technologies Used

  • Custom Post Types (hand-coded)
  • Gulp
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • SASS

Custom Code Written

  • 1 custom plugin
  • 1 custom theme based on Genesis starter
  • 3300+ lines of Sass
  • 500+ lines of PHP/HTML
  • 100+ lines of JavaScript/jQuery

Designed By

Katie Saunders of Pop & Grey

Visit West Trade Interiors

The Vision

West Trade Interiors needed a rebrand and a new website to help them grow their business. Their current brand and website weren't doing them any favors, and the style didn't match the caliber of spaces they were designing for their clients.

They selected a strategic partner for this process—Katie Saunders of Pop & Grey—who specializes in branding for interior design companies. And...they were off!

Selected Mockups

The Challenges

Right before the development phase on this project was scheduled to begin, the world was turned upside down by COVID-19.

Interior design done the traditional way was halted by social distancing measures, so WTI really needed to get the new site launched as quickly as possible so they could promote their virtual design services during quarantine.

Of course, many other businesses also desperately needed their website projects completed as quickly as possible to replace some of their lost income. I was slammed, working my normal workweek as well as evenings and as much as possible on weekends.

I was determined to help as much as I could, and turning around WTI's project on a tighter-than-usual timeline was something I could do.

The Process

Before I got started, I had to grab some existing blog content from WTI's current site on Duda. Duda doesn't have any easy export options for blog posts, so I had to do the ol' manual copy-paste of the content. I even had to download the images from the live posts since I couldn't get them from Duda's backend! Luckily, there wasn't a ton of existing content, so it didn't take too long.

Other than those blog posts, I was starting from scratch on a totally new WordPress install. I initially develop all projects on my local machine so that sites under construction aren't visible to the world, so I spun up WordPress for the new site and dug in right away.

First, I knocked out building and styling the inner pages: about, contact, services, and press. These mainly static pages are usually the quickest to develop and gave me a big leg up on site completion.

Once those were done, I created a hand-coded custom post type for portfolio galleries inside a new plugin. ACF powered content entry for these portfolio items, and I uploaded all content for a couple of portfolio items so that I could style and test them.

After the portfolio, I tackled the blog. And, for the crown jewel on top, the homepage!

Many developers start with the homepage, but I generally leave it for the end of the project because homepages tend to contain lots of elements from across the site: blog posts, content taken from other pages, etc. I'm able to reuse the styles I wrote for those other pages here, making my sites a little bit lighter-weight than they would be otherwise.

The Results

WTI was able to launch their absolutely gorgeous new site in May, a little ahead of our timeline AND with a bit more complexity than originally planned! They were able to start promoting their virtual design services, and were thrilled with both the look of the new site and how easy it was to keep the site content up to date themselves.

Site screencaps

Homepage preview on desktop screen size

Services page preview on desktop

Portfolio index preview on tablet screen size

Homepage preview at tablet screen size

Contact page preview at desktop screen size

Blog index preview at desktop screen size

The client's opinion

Business portrait of Katie Saunders

Katie Saunders, Pop & Grey

What went into choosing the developer you would work with?

"This was a really creative project, and I knew I needed a developer who could bring it to life how I envisioned without telling me some of the little details weren't possible.  Besides the creative ability, one of the most important things I need in a developer is a good communicator who is highly organized and can finish the work on time, and Megan is really good with this.  I love your streamlined process and the way I can see things getting checked off in Asana and know you're on track."

 

What was the one most positive thing about working with me?

"The fact that you worked hard to make sure everything was up to my standards.  I so appreciated that you continued to work on the press page when it wasn't as user friendly as I would have liked.  I respect that you're super upfront with your policies and boundaries, but also really appreciate that you make sure you deliver above and beyond."

 

How did your client respond to the finished product?

"WTI loves the look of their new site and how easy it is to update themselves."

 

Would you recommend me to someone else? Why or why not?

"Absolutely.  You always deliver what you promise."

Ready to hand off development of your next project to a developer you can trust?

Get started today: contact me
West Trade Interiors | megangarwood.com/blog

weThrive live events

iMac with weThrive live single event on screen

Service

Installation and configuration of The Events Calendar plugin and Event Tickets Plus extension. Development of a custom events index and custom single event listing.

Technologies Used

  • Gulp
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • SASS
  • The Events Calendar

Custom Code Written

  • 1 existing theme tweaked
  • 1100+ lines of Sass
  • 1 custom script in JavaScript/jQuery

Designed By

Kristin Prius, K Design Co

Visit weThrive live events

Selected Mockups

The Results

Screencap of live single event on weThrive website

Screencap of live single event on weThrive website

Screencap of live events index on weThrive website

Screencap of live events index on weThrive website

The client's opinion

Headshot of project designer

Kristin Prius, K Design Co

What went into choosing the developer you would work with?

“Finding a good developer has been hard for me in the past. I have high expectations for the developers I work with because I want to make sure I deliver the best final product to my client. Megan was recommended to me by another developer I know and trust and based on her website, I knew we would be a great fit. We also share a love of bows so I knew it was meant to be! :)”

 

How did your client respond to the finished product?

“My client was so happy to have events functionality on her site! She literally could not wait to launch it and she is now bringing in additional revenue because she can add events and take payments on her site. ”

 

What was the one most positive thing about working with me?

“Megan was very responsive, attentive and willing to work through the changes I requested. She even took the time to troubleshoot a couple of issues that popped up during the project that helped us have a better end result. I appreciated her organized process and also being willing to do a quick turn-around for my client who had a tight deadline.”

 

Would you recommend me to someone else? Why or why not?

“I would definitely recommend working with Megan. She made the process very easy for me and was able to implement exactly what my client wanted, and as a result, made me look good!”

Ready to hand off development of your next project to a developer you can trust?

Get started today: contact me

Sweet Life Planner Club

Sweet Life Planner Club website preview

Service

Development for an existing membership site run on WordPress/MemberPress to make it easier to update and maintain, including creation and integration of several new custom post types.

Technologies Used

  • Custom Post Types (hand-coded)
  • FacetWP
  • Gulp
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MemberPress
  • SASS

Custom Code Written

  • 4 custom plugins
  • 1 custom theme
  • 3200+ lines of PHP/HTML
  • 3200+ lines of SASS
  • 1000+ lines of JavaScript/jQuery

Designed By

Shaina Longstreet of Your Ampersand Studio
for Laura Smith of I Heart Planners

Visit Sweet Life Planner Club

The Vision

Laura, the entrepreneur behind the I Heart Planners blog empire, was feeling stifled and frustrated by the existing site for her membership, the Sweet Life Planner Club. She and her team couldn’t update the site easily, and when they tried, something always seemed to go wrong. Members also had a hard time navigating the site’s massive content library, resulting in more user turnover than expected.

It was time to expand into something more custom; more feature-filled and user-friendly. Laura wanted to make it easy for her and her team members to add or update site content. And, more importantly, she needed the extensive library of content that the Club housed to be effortlessly searchable and browsable for Club members.

That’s where I came in!

Selected Mockups

The Challenges

The biggest challenge in this build was working with an existing, very active membership site: I didn’t want to cause any data loss or affect active memberships. The sheer size of the project was another factor: all the new features we were adding meant there was LOTS of custom coding to be done, and all of us wanted to hit our deadlines for launch day.

The Process

I knew right from the start that this was going to be a big build with lots of custom components that needed creating, so I started by mapping out a “plan of attack.” Once I got that all outlined, all I had to do was stick to the tasks and deadlines I had laid out up front. Easier said than done though, right? ?

The most important part of the build took priority: the printables section. I created a custom post type for printables, laid out the archive and integrated it with FacetWP for live filtering and search, created the single printable view, and then layered on some JavaScript to make it more interactive and responsive feeling.

Once I had the printables knocked out, I was able to use that component as a “base” from which to create the remaining custom post types and archives: bootcamps, bonuses, and FAQ items.

After revisions, testing, and QA on the SLPC staging server, it was time to take the new site live. I made sure to take a full backup before beginning—I wanted to be able to mitigate any data loss if something unexpected happened!—and then carefully migrated the site from staging to live, utilizing some custom scripts to swap old data into the new custom post types automatically.

The Results

The launch went really well! No major incidents came up during the migration.

It’s much easier for Laura and her team members to update the site on their own, meaning they can devote more time to actually creating content instead of fighting with the membership site. Laura is still using the new-and-improved SLPC website over two years later, in fact!

Site screencaps

The client's opinion

Laura Smith headshot

Laura Smith, I Heart Planners

Were you skeptical at all before starting the project? If yes, what about?

“Yes, I was skeptical about whether the things I wanted for my site were do-able.”

 

What went into choosing the developer you would work with?

“I wanted someone who would really work together with me and take ownership of all the pieces to really make the vision happen. And I also wanted someone with a lot of experience with membership sites.”

 

What was the one most positive thing about working with me?

“The results - the site is exactly what we want, and is a huge improvement!! Megan was also really helpful in answering all our questions thoroughly.”

 

What specific results did you get from this project?

“Our club looks much better and has drastically improved functionality. We also now have more control ourselves, and we have a good framework set up for the content to grow. Also, members can find what they're looking for so much more easily. In the end, I really believe it will improve member retention.”

 

Would you recommend me to someone else? Why or why not?

“Yes, definitely. I loved how you took what I had mocked up and made it happen. I also love that it felt like you were committed to getting everything working ideally.”

Ready to hand off development of your next project to a developer you can trust?


Get started today: contact me

The Savvy Community

The Savvy Community website displayed on iMac

Service

Development of a new WordPress membership website with user profiles, a searchable member directory, communities, forums, events, and trainings.

Technologies Used

  • bbPress
  • BuddyPress
  • Custom Post Types (hand-coded)
  • Gulp
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Mapplic
  • MemberPress
  • SASS

Custom Code Written

  • 4 custom plugins
  • 1 custom theme, based on Love Charlotte by Get Polished
  • 8500+ lines of PHP/HTML
  • 6700+ lines of SASS
  • 1000+ lines of JavaScript/jQuery

Designed By

Irene Hardy of Magnoliahouse Creative
for Heather Crabtree


Visit The Savvy Community

The Vision

Have you ever felt alone in your business? Like you’re not a part of the “cool” crowd? Have you wondered if you have it in you to keep going, felt like everyone else has it all figured out, or wished you could have some #realtalk with someone who’s been in your shoes before? If any of those resonate with you, Heather Crabtree has just the place for you: The Savvy Community membership site. Heather had already built a thriving community for female entrepreneurs on Facebook -- the Savvy Business Owners group -- but knew that the limitations of Facebook’s group system were holding the community back from reaching its full potential.

With the help of her team, Heather came up with the idea of a membership site that would fill its members up instead of overwhelming them like the Facebook group did. She wanted members to be able to interact on a more personal level, wanted to create a place where authentic connections could be made, and wanted everyone to feel like they were welcome there.

The Savvy Community membership site had to be full-featured from day one. Included in the laundry list of necessary features: protecting members only pages from outside eyes; complex user profiles with custom fields; a searchable directory of members to make it easy to find exactly the person you need; a dashboard where members could find all the latest updates and happenings; a home for in-person Savvy Meetups that integrated seamlessly with the forums; a calendar of upcoming events; a catalog of trainings, both future and past...and, of course, everything needed to be painstakingly styled to match the mockups created by Heather’s brilliant designer, Irene Hardy of Magnoliahouse Creative.

Selected Mockups

The Savvy Community Dashboard mockup. Includes an activity feed with updatable prompt, member profile at-a-glance, upcoming events and trainings, most recent forum posts, and a quick member search function.

The Savvy Community profile creation screen mockup. Custom fields had to be added to BuddyPress, then the templates needed to be altered to make editing user profiles quick and easy.

The Savvy Community membership directory mockup. Critical information from each member's profile needed to be visible in the directory, and an extensive search feature made the directory easy to navigate.

The Savvy Community notifications mockup options on desktop. Either a notification count bubble or a "My Notifications" link with count could be added to the listed options in the secondary navigation.

Modular mockup for forum post styling in the new forum index, added July 2017.

The Challenges

I knew before development even started that this site was going to be particularly challenging, if only for the sheer complexity of it. There were so many moving parts -- MemberPress, BuddyPress, bbPress, and many more -- that getting them all correctly integrated into the site and working in harmony with each other was a daunting task.

The timeline was also a challenge: originally planned for fall 2016, it took longer to prepare and design The Savvy Community than estimated. It ended up getting pushed from a September start to November/December, when I already had a different, complex website development project underway and would be out of office for a week for the holidays.

But, ready or not, The Savvy Community was launching on January 18th, 2017, so I had to find a way to reconcile the demands of two big projects at the same time.

The Process

Overcoming the challenges of The Savvy Community’s build came down to two essential keys: getting a solid plan in place, and taking development one component at a time. The idea of working on two projects of similarly large magnitude at the same time was overwhelming at first. But, both projects were non-negotiable, where their timelines and my desire to complete them were concerned, so I knew I had to find a way to make it happen.

I already had a plan in place for tackling the other big project in active development when Savvy was ready to be built, so I knew exactly what I needed to have done each week for that project in order to launch by a certain date.

I didn’t start the Savvy site with a plan like that, though. I needed to get my hands dirty first, figuring out the best way to approach this huge custom build before me. I spent the first couple of weeks working on both projects simultaneously: first came the other project (it was launching over a month before Savvy). Once I checked off my list of tasks for it that week, I shifted gears to work on Savvy as much as possible before the week’s end.

It took me a couple of weeks of experimental development to figure out the best way to proceed: one piece at a time. As I slowly and carefully worked through this process, I figured out that our original plan would need some adjusting, and that all of the separate components weren’t natively integrated with each other. After I considered the completely custom elements that would need to be built from the ground up, I knew the only way to get the site done was by creating a sturdy foundation, then layering on one additional item at a time.

Once I had a plan for approaching development of The Savvy Community, I wrote out a week-to-week timeline that would carry me right up to the delivery date for the testable site concept, knocking out each crucial component in the right order. I stuck as close to that plan as possible, even though it required a lot of late nights, early mornings, and weekends spent holed up in my office. I was able to deliver the testable site a week before the original deadline, so we could get started on revisions before the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The Results

A few weeks, a little testing, and a lot of revisions later, The Savvy Community officially launched. Despite the large number of new visitors to the fledgling site, there were nothing more than minor, easily fixable hiccups, none of which hindered the success of the first round. Over 200 Savvies raised their hands and joined the membership site in twelve days.

Desktop screencaps


Mobile screencaps


The client's opinion

Irene Hardy of Magnoliahouse Creative

Irene Hardy, Magnoliahouse Creative

What made you decide to work with a web developer? Describe the moment where you knew it was time to work with one.

“I am not a developer, but I want to provide my clients with truly custom designs, so I've been working with developers since I started my business. However, it took me until I was two years in to realize that I need to work with a GREAT, domestic developer, instead of inexpensive overseas developers. After yet another round of revisions, where I was paying the developer to fix things that should have been obvious, and still coming back with more errors, I knew I needed to find a true partner, not a virtual freelancer.”

 

What went into choosing the developer you would work with?

“Well this one is easy! I knew I needed a talented, dependable, capable developer with great communication skills to make this happen, and so I wasn't willing to work with anyone but you!”

 

How did it make you feel to outsource the coding, so you could focus on design?

“Amazing! SO freeing! Instead of having to focus my designs on something easily create-able, or something that would be easy to implement from a standard theme or framework, I was able to truly focus on creating custom designs for my clients.”

 

How did you find the experience of working together to create results for your client?

“It was amazing, as always...it was so great to truly work together to serve the clients needs.”

 

How has working together transformed your business and how you work with your clients?

“Working together has allowed me to be a much better designer, since I can put my clients' objectives first, instead of feeling limited by the development options. I'm able to take on more ambitious projects and really elevate my client experience.”

 

What was the most positive thing about working with me on this project?

“No stress!! I knew you were going to get the work done and done well. I could hand off my designs and know you were executing them beautifully, without me having to double check everything, micromanage or write a 20 page PDF outline all the obvious information.”

 

How did your client respond to the finished product?

“Absolute OBSESSION! She loved the site, had a great launch, and was so proud of the results.”

Ready to hand off development of your next project to a developer you can trust?


Get started today: contact me