Projects

Physio Active

It had been a while since I (re)developed a website from scratch, since the last few years my focus has been mostly on WPML Troubleshooting and WPML Support.

Redeveloping the Physio Active website (English and Indonesian with WPML of course) was therefore a welcome project and my first with the WordPress Full Site Editor (WP FSE). For the previous theme the site was using, the client had to add HTML code and shortcodes throughout the site, which was of course error prone, beside the fact that it was unsustainable for the team.

The brief was to more or less copy over the looks of the old site, but then during the project it was decided that the site needed a brand new homepage, for which an external designer was hired.

I used the Ollie theme, which comes with incredible onboarding support by its creator Mike McAlister. The theme comes with many patterns that can be used throughout the site.

Since I made quite a few custom post types for the site, coupled with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), I went with a more hybrid approach using ACF Block Templates instead of going full in with the Full Site Editor. As a more traditional developer, this approach suits me better and in its current state the WP FSE still allows for this approach, so it seems the best of both worlds.

It was a fun project which gave me a chance to brush up on my skills, experience the new developments in WordPress, and step outside my regular workflow to explore new approaches and keep my expertise sharp.

And although the WP FSE looks promising, I will not go near it anytime soon again when it comes to websites that need to be running multilingual with WPML. I wrote an opinion piece about the reasons why.

You can see the project at https://www.physioactive.id

Nuvias

Without going into too much detail we did extensive Localization work for this Nuvias.

Especially with bigger corporate clients we see that they use WPML more to target different countries (true Localization), than different languages.

The site is available for no less than 16 different countries (or regions) and before adding these, there was extensive planning involved on getting things optimized and across all departments involved.

It was decided that the site would be rolled out in mainly English and only certain countries would receive immediate translations. Then in due time other countries will receive their own translations.

It was very exciting to work on a project of this size and especially also because the work involved so much more than only fixing issues.

Quartix

The Quartix project is one of the bigger corporate clients we worked for in 2019 and the project lasted for a good five months.

During this period we did a lot of varied work which was not centered solely on fixing Localization issues with WPML. We did several assessments and did research on different topics topics, we wrote several reports, proposals, tutorials and documentation and worked on Optimization too.

The main challenge was on finding the best way to bring several different sites together into one multilingual one, whilst keeping a site structure that would make sense for all different markets. The USA market had much more content available, and the UK site needed to be brought in from a separate domain. Then there were several European languages that were already running on a separate WPML install that needed to be brought in.

We were collaborating with one other remote developer, the Quartix marketing team and various language teams for the countries involved.

LUP

Like so many projects, the redevelopment of the LUP Luftbild Umwelt Planung website started with a WPML Assessment to look into some issues that had gone wrong after an update of the site’s software.

In our extensive report we mentioned that although we could take care of fixing the issues, this would be an excellent time to do a complete site makeover. The old site used less than 600 pixels of width, a font-size that was barely readable, not always sharp header images and things that are no longer common in website development like a button to print the site. Also the site was not working on smaller screens.

After the client agreed, our designer came with a modern and bold redesign, which we developed into a fully functioning website with a minimum amount of plugins and suitable for all devices.

Please find below a series of screenshots that show the end result.

For comparison, we have also included screenshots of the same pages of the old site.

321online

Human Network International based in Madagascar approached us when they were looking for a contractor to help them with the development of 321online.org.

The scope of the project consisted of developing a main marketing website and aside from that country specific sites with country specific content.

With many years experience working with different languages and WPML, this project was a first for us as the different country specific websites were to use many non-standard languages such as Malagasy and Chichewa.

Another point of interest was that the content was so-called zero-rated, meaning that telecom partners were to provide it free of charge and last but not least it would have to be possible for the local content to be consumed on mobile phones as small and basic as feature phones (the generation of mobile devices before smartphones).

All in all a very interesting project!

We built out the marketing site using a bespoke design done by our designer. For the backend we used our own in-house developed starter theme.

For the county specific sites we developed a master theme based on the Twenty Fifteen default WP theme and from that it was possible to derive child themes. Via a simple options screen, the end user only has to add the language variables, colors, telecom partner and logo and upload the country specific content.

Screenshots