Quite a number of my clients are artists or non-profit organizations, folks who aren’t going to spend $thousands on their website, and so my special niche has been being more affordable than most web designers/design firms. Here are some of my projects over the last few years:
Recent Projects:
When the Board of the Waddell Creek Association —the non-profit organization established to support the Rancho del Oso Nature & History Center— first hired me (2015) to help them update their website, their old site was built in a very old version of Joomla; despite having worked some with Joomla, it quickly became apparent that it was going to be a bear to work with this old version of Joomla, so I proposed that I rebuild the site in WP. They agreed, and it’s been smooth sailing ever since. On a quarterly basis I post their newsletter and update their “Current Programs and Events” page, as well as other changes and updates from time to time. I also help them with membership and donations forms and pages, integrating with their PayPal account.
Jeremy Lin began working at Rancho del Oso in 20XX as the Interpretive Specialist, and in 2016, he approached me to be his webmaster for a new project he was starting at Big Basin, to train volunteers to walk the various trails in the park, and submit reports on various observations as well as interactions with park visitors. A year or so later he expanded to 6 other state parks, and the program may go statewide at some point. This site includes some greeat conditional logic in the report submission form, such that once you select about which park you’re reporting, a custom list of trails appears, and your report is sent to a custom list of recipients. (Unfortunately, the report form is behind a password, so you can’t see it in action…
Roy Holmberg is one of those amazing “Renaissance men:” a landscape artist, facilities manager, blacksmith/metalworker, carpenter/woodworker, creative artist in many many media… He donated hundreds of hours to a project for me and a friend (“Big Red,” see his site), and so this website project is a pro bono project in thanks for his incredible generosity with his time, skills and extensive shop. It was originally a hand-coded site, but we converted it to WordPress a couple years ago.
Like Roy Holmberg’s site, the site for my dear old friend the Rev. Frances Moulton is a pro bono project; I’ve known Fran since I was a teenager and she was in her 30s; we’ve collaborated on many projects over the decades, so it is my profound honor to help her with her website.
Jonathan Berkey was a college buddy of mine, at UC Santa Cruz, in the early 1980s. When we graduated UCSC, he joined the Peace Corps and went off to eastern Africa. After his 2-year stint, the Peace Corps hired him to stay on as a regional director; he spent another 3 years in Africa. During that time, he established a 501(c)(3) non-profit, Global Education Partnerships. A few year after returning to the US, GEP ceased being an active organization, so in 20XX Jonathan established another 501(c)(3), the International School-to-School Partnerships — and as an educator myself, I enthusiastically joined the team, as their webmaster and as a member of the EducationAdvisory Board.
Past Projects I’m no longer involved with:
These are some of the projects in which I helped the people/organizations involved either create new sites or update their old sites, but with which —for various reasons— I am no longer working:
I was a teacher in Salinas Valley High School District (SVUSD) for 9 years, 1998–2007, and was an active member of the teacher’s union during that time. I can’t recall what their website was before I became their webmaster, but around 2002 or so I rebuilt their website in WP, and was the webmaster until a couple years after I left SVUSD in 2007. They then hired someone else —a teacher still working in the district— so I have not been involved since around 2010…
I built this site many years ago, and was their webmaster for several years, but they’ve since moved it to SquareSpace and I no longer manage it.
My son and daughter were involved for several years with White Stag, the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) co-ed Venture Crew leadership training program. I built White Stag Crew 122 a WP-built website and helped mange/maintain it for a number of years. A couple years after my kids were no longer involved, they took over management of the site. (There’s been a bit of apolitical struggle between 2 diferent factions of the WS122 leadership, so I believe they’ve changed their domain name, and I don’t know the link to the site that I first built…
The Symphony League of Santa Cruz County is a non-profit that raises money to help support the SC Symphony, and they hold several events each year in this effort. Their old site was very old-school: hand-coded with table layout. When they contacted me to rebuild their site, I convinced them that WP is the way to go. I often use this project as proof of WordPress’s ease of use: After I had built the site, I spent around 6–7 hours (over a few days) training their 70+ year old treasurer how to update the site and make changes; and for many years I would hear from him once or twice a year asking for help with something, and other than that he maintained and updated the site himself.
When I first created the website (2008) for the Santa Lucia Region (Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties) of the California Association for the Gifted, it was at www.giftedcalifornia.org and it was a custom-built website using a Stu Nichols menu and PHP includes. CAG is an organization dedicated to promoting and advocating for educational opportunities for gifted and advanced students. Several years later we moved to cagsantalucia.org and I rebuilt the website in WP. CAG still exists, but since several of the most involved educators retired, the Santa Lucia regional network is far less active, and so we let the website expire.
Current and recent clients have included:
- Lovely Rental Home (www.lovelyrentalhome.com) Custom-built site; this site offers no navigation, so it offers clients “anonymous” listings of rentals, with no obvious affiliations to other rental properties or agencies. See a couple here or here.
- Santa Cruz Chapter of the ACLU (www.santacruzaclu.org) WordPress site; using Twenty Twelve theme (free).
- Democratic Women’s Club of Santa Cruz County (www.dwcscc.org) WordPress site.
- Positive Discipline Community Resources (www.pdcrsantacruz.org) WordPress site; using Desire theme (free).
- Santa Cruz Homeopathy (www.santacruzhomeopathy.com) WordPress site with custom child theme. A commercial site for a practicing homeopath.
- AMA Mexico (www.amamexico.org) WordPress site; using Organic Theme’s Ocean theme (premium). AMA Mexico is a non-profit organization working to save the sea turtles along the Pacific coast of Mexico in Nuevo Vallarta (just north of Puerto Vallarta).
- Rancho del Oso History & Nature Center (www.ranchodeloso.org) WordPress site; using Twenty Twelve theme (free). The Rancho del Oso Nature & History Center is the interpretive Center at Waddell Beach, part of the Big Basin State Park. This website is maintained by the non-profit group whose mission is to support the Nature Center (beyond the limited support the State Parks Department provides).
- Sean M. Monaghan, Artist, Bronze Works Foundry, Instructor (www.seanmmonaghan.com) Custom-built website, with several related but unique page layouts, for a local artist, foundry owner and art instructor.
- Duke Street Dogs (www.dukestreetdogs.com) WordPress site; using TwentyTwelve theme (free). The DSD are a great Americana band in Durham, North Carolina, with a loyal following and their first CD released in 2012.
Other projects have included:
- Several memorial websites for departed friends and family:
- Philip Langton (custom-built)
- Flo Woodiel (WordPress)
- Elizabeth Hamilton (Custom-built with WP element for comments)
- Fung Shui Home California (Custom-built, with several photo galleries and tables of services offered; now defunct and gone.)
- Troop 633, Boy Scouts of America (custom-built, years ago as my class project fro Teacher John’s “Web Pub 3” class at Cabrillo College)
- Scrap Mabuhay (Custom-built for a client, who has since replaced it with another site.)
Other CMS Projects:
We have also worked on websites built in Drupal and Joomla. Drupal is a beast to work in, and we do not recommend it. Joomla is harder than WordPress but easier than Drupal. (Read a report (186 KB PDF) we wrote for a client.) Most websites do not need all the power of Joomla, but if you need a large and complex website, Joomla might be your tool of choice.
