I updated a static html site to project a more professional impression and made it easy to maintain.
Barry O’Shea, a director at Moston Construction contacted me asking to update their current site. It wasn’t fully responsive and it was difficult to update. I made a number of suggestions for consistency in the layout and content and it was okayed.
Each project on the old site’s portfolio pages used a subset of eight information fields. To encourage consistent use of these fields I wrote code to enhance the portfolio item edit area with space for these eight fields. I used the CMB2 plugin for this as it does not negatively impact the speed of the website front end.
I also added an easy-to-use Gallery section to upload project photos. The front end shows thumbnail images that are expanded into a lighthouse gallery when clicked.
On the front end the information fields and photos are displayed in a consistent manner.
The old site was static html files and the new site urls were all different. I created .htaccess redirects for each old page and any links in Google to point to the new urls. I checked each and every link in Google to verify my work.
As the old site was rarely updated Google rarely visited it. Even months after deploying the new site Google still listed many of the old urls. This is not a problem for site visitors as the redirects work correctly.