Yes, you can have a great website, but it takes work.
A good website takes planning, but a great website takes planning and the right code.
Let's be honest; it is 2021. There are great off-the-shelf solutions for nearly everything on the web. If you are just starting out, something like Squarespace probably has you covered. If you are enterprise level and are trying to reinvent the CRM wheel, you need to just give up and pay the money for Salesforce.
BUT!! For everything else, Wordpress really isn't that great. In fact, beyond a point, it can be terrible or downright dangerous for your brand. Security issues, plugins failing silently and outdated code can take your site down without warning or make it prohibitively expensive to give your web presence the extra edge you are looking for.
So, what are you supposed to do if you have greater security needs, deal with more data or simply want to break out of the standard off-the-shelf box?
Well, one thing you could do is hire me.
What I do
Prepare for buzzwords …
Having spent a little time in the LAMP stack trenches, mostly just trying to make things look pretty, I now deliver JAM stack sites with the blissful ease provided by React. Simple sites (like this one) benefit from the elegant simplicity of Gitlab/Vercel for deployment and hosting. More ambitious projects with user authentication, custom backend access and more robust database needs are also built with React and typically live on AWS.
I mostly write CSS and HTML and a bit of JavaScript. Past projects have incorporated data visulizations with d3.js and oddball jobs doing crazy canvas animations.
For small projects I do occasionally work alone, though most of my code projects are run through Web Apps.
Consulting
But what if you are just starting to look at a new web project for yourself or your business? Even if launch day is still well over the horizon, it can be helpful to have someone act as a guide through the murky, confusing swamp of decisions that need to be made before initial requirements and deployment.
Having worked steadily in the digital space since 2014, I have seen a lot of what can go right — and very, very wrong — in building and launching a new web project. You can either learn these lessons the hard way, or tap into the experience I can bring to the table to chart the smoothest path possible to launch day.
The ONE thing you should know is …
I don't do Wordpress. Really. It is a great platform for what it does, and it is a fantastic solution for many people. For that reason, though, you can probably hire someone cheaper who will get messy in the noodly bowl of plugin-salad that stands between you and digital oblivion.
Past work is great. New work is better.
If you are ready to make something amazing together, don't hesitate to reach out.