Portfolio

The New Praetorians is a new series from an author named RK Syrus. I was tasked with creating a minimalist low-effort site on WordPress.com that promotes the series and is easy to update.

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Kristina Beck was an up and coming romance author when I helped her with her first website. I built out her site, customized the background, header, and other subtle details; and set up the mailing list pop-up and social media links.

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D A Carey is an author of post-apocalyptic fiction. I built his site on the Genesis frramework using a dark color scheme and complimented it with images of wrecked cities. Long term plans include adding a store, but that is an ongoing project.

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Jerri Williams is a former FBI agent and crime and non-fiction author. I designed a new site for her with a custom home page. I also added a second blog to the site so that her blog posts could remain separate from her podcast.

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The Creative Penn is a site where authors can learn how to create, publish, and market their first book, and where to go from there.

I provide ongoing maintenance and updates including SSL and plugin replacements due to conflicts, and I add new features on request. Recent changes include tweaks to the site's AMP pages, a new more efficient search feature, and the addition of a search box in the menu bar.

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This author site was built in Divi for a self-published author. (There's a little too much red and black for my taste, but it does work out well.) I updated the site for Andrew, including adding links, tweaking the CSS to improve the site's flow, and optimizing the site for speed.

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Lateral Action is the site of author, poet, and business coach Mark McGuinness. I helped Mark update a decade old site. First we switched it to HTTPS, and then I identified and replaced outdated plugins, tech that modern web browsers no longer support (Flash video, for example), and page elements that could look better (outdated signup forms).

Mark is also a current support client.

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Author Website in a Box solves the headache of setting up a WordPress website. It packs an entire author website into one easy to install package, and includes everything from a pre-built home page to bookshelf and contact pages.

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Mike Quick is a plumber based in Fredericksburg, VA, and he has also written a few books. He has several sites,  and one of them (onlineplumbingadvice.com) was a very basic affair based on the twenty eleven WordPress theme (Wayback Machine).

I replaced the theme with a better design, tweaked it to suit his blogging style, and fixed spelling and formatting errors in the content. I also added the usual security and SEO plugins on the backend.

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Kylie needed a few small changes made to her website, and I was happy to oblige. I added a new background image, replaced the bookshelf plugin and reuploaded the book listings, and tweaked the header so it blended in better with the body of the site.

This was a small project, but I am pleased with how it came out.

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Lisa's site needed a lot of work, including both updates and a migration to a new hosting company.

I added HTTPS, imported blog posts from Lisa's old blog, and then moved the site from Godaddy to Bluehost. The site is now faster, costs less to run, and and will have better SEO as a result of the added blog posts.

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PlainEnglishESL.com belongs to a teacher who writes her own curriculum. She needed a site which one, linked to her work on Teachers Pay Teachers; and two; collected visitors' emails.

I would not use this theme again (it has too many annoying quirks in terms of CSS) but the site did come out well. While I was working on the site, I went above and beyond. I cleaned up a couple plugin conflicts, deleted unused and duplicate plugins, and performed other basic maintenance like SEO and fixing links.

Many clients hire me to fix a specific problem on their site, but I never stop there. Instead, I make sure that the entire site is functioning at optimum performance. Sometimes that extra work is outside the scope of the project, but I see websites as tools, and I was taught to always leave a tool in excellent condition.

And that is exactly how I will treat your website.

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Here's a fun little weekend project.

At one point I looked into building a turnkey website hosting service, and as part of that process I also set up an FAQ where users can find answers.

There are several free FAQ themes for WP, but they all looked awful. So in addition to answering all the questions, I also had to modify the CSS and layout so that the site actually looked nice.

It was a small project, but a fun one because it was such a change of pace.

Allise Hurd is a children's book author. In late 2018 I designed a site for her using a simple and clean WordPress theme. I continued to support and host Allise's site until late 2019. (The site is now defunct, which is a pity because I loved the design.)

Sharon Reamer is an SF author who wanted a site made using a WP theme whose quirks included a slide out sidebar and a banner on the left side of the screen. The theme had a number of limitations imposed by the designer's whim, and customizing the graphics and the formatting was a fun challenge.

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Dreamwatch is an indie press. It had a well established site that needed a refresh.

I created a new front page for the site, and added a second blog. The new home page is designed to bring all three of Dreamwatch's main activities to your attention, and entices you to find out more.

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Waystone is a newly-launched small press that focuses on fantasy and related non-fiction (studies of historical myths, for example). I designed and built the site using Genesis, found all of the press's books on Amazon and added them to the site, and completed other important parts of setting up the site.

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Atomic Centaur was going to be a new SF&F fan blog. This blog never got off the ground, but I did take it as far as finishing the site design. I gave the site a theme that practically shouted SF blog, and tweaked the colors to replace the muddy stock colors with a vibrant palette.

Lucinda came to me with a request: could I please help her figure out how to set up her website's new theme. This was a complex theme, with a lot of built-in features, but but one thing it did not have was easy to follow instructions. The finished site was simple compared to the demo, but it still looks great.

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This is an event calendar I designed and launched in early 2020 / late 2019. The site collects all the writing events in the Northern Virginia region, including conferences, workshops, book fairs, etc. The site was built by adapting my Author Website in a Box project to fill a very different purpose.

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