Project Overview
Nxt Gen Nexus is a site that offers resources and community to those who are the next generation of a family business. For this website I started with getting the site back in a functioning state. The site had malware, outdated plugins and some code that didn’t work how it should. There were also some updates the client wanted to have done to the website. Once the initial project was completed we moved to redoing the homepage, header and footer while also doing a style update so the site looked cohesive.Where: Freelance
CMS: WordPress
Skills Used: PHP, Javascript, jQuery, CSS3, HTML5, MySQL, Web Design
Services Provided:
- Plugin Consolidation
- Malware Removal
- Website Restoration
- Troublsehooting
- Custom Code
- Ongoing Website Maintenance
- Homepage Rebuild
- UI Redesign
- Web Design
Malware Removal and Website Restoration
When I first started working with this client their website was very slow and you couldn’t update any of the pages. I suggested doing a plugin audit so I could take a look at the state of the plugins and site as a whole. I found that many of the plugins haven’t been updated in a while. While checking out the plugins I also noticed that the theme was out of date as well. The client also let me know that their host let them know about some suspicious files so I took a backup of the site and ran it through an anti-virus software and removed the files it let me know were malicious. After that I moved forward with updating plugins and removing ones that were inactive and outdated. After doing the update on the plugins I went to try and update a page but was unable to, and after getting the new credentials I was able to update the theme. As the last step after all the updates for the plugins and theme I went through the site to make sure it was loading alright, and I also went to edit a page to ensure pages could be updated as intended.
Homepage Rebuild and Style Update
Working with the client and the designer they hired I was given the new homepage mockup and style guide. I worked with the client to make some edits to the final homepage to his liking. After getting approval to work on the homepage rebuild I made a duplicate of the site so I could work on it without interpreting the traffic to the site. Using the mockup as reference I built the homepage and made some style updates to the remaining pages. I removed backgrounds, changed colors and updated the navigation. The change helped improve the look and feel of the site and made it easier to navigate.
Trusted Advisor Directory
The client wanted to add a trusted advisor directory so we first had a meeting to discuss what they were looking for in terms of functionality and the end result. After the meeting I went ahead and looked around for some plugins that had a directory as a part of the functionality of the site. In looking I found AR Member which the client liked but after the initial approval of the plugin I looked further into their is currently set up for adding using roles and updating users. I considered that they already have users that have been added and a set up with the form system, Gravity Forms, so I decided to custom build the directory.
Before building out the functionality I did some brainstorming on how I wanted to build out the functionality. Everything from how I wanted to build the form and how to pull in the users and how to filter them. I decided to use Gravity Forms for the filters and handle the submission in PHP. For the submission I gather the submitted fields and send them to a processing file that will query users based on the search terms and use a meta query to get more specific with the results.
Website Maintenance
For this client I also provide ongoing maintenance and support depending on their needs. Some tasks I’ve done include adding a blog page shows all the blogs on the site. I’ve also updated the NxtGen Connect page which shows all the users that have signed up for the platform and allows them to send emails to communicate with other next generation business owners that are a match to what their business does. I’ve also added banners for different events they put on. And a number of UI and page updates that required some web design to propose to the client for better user experience.