Pawsitive Match
Languages Used:
HTML
SCSS
PHP
JavaScript
WordPress
If you would like to visit the site, please click here.
This was a group project, Dean Hibbert and I co-developed the backend and Dean did the front end. Kaia Middleton handled all the graphic design on the project. Jennifer Lukiv and Hanah Olalia handled photography for the animals on the site at the time of the project.
Going into this project me and Dean knew we wanted to redo Pawsitive Matches Website, the design they were using was not mobile friendly but their user base was primarily on mobile devices. To help ease the transition I offered to redo the design they had already on the website while Dean handled making a brand new design, our major goal was to be using the same backend so if they ever wanted to switch between the designs they would be able to at the flick of a switch. As Dean and I looked into their current website and its backend we noticed how not user-friendly it was and decided to pitch using WordPress to help streamline the process of adding an animal to the site. As a group, we met up with the primary user uploading animals and discussed with them how we could make it easier for them and from there we had a list of wants to make everyone’s life easier.
The problems & My solutions:
The first problem I encountered was redoing the old design, most of the elements were using fixed pixel widths that did not really translate well to more responsive units. Following that problem everything else on the front end design ran smoothly, the backend, on the other hand, became a complicated web of pages and code. The first major problem Dean and I had to solve was how we wanted to go about each of the separate post types, we settled on the tried and true method of using Custom Post Types.
After solving the first backend problem, we settled into the next backend problem, how to make each post type work as best possible for the end user. Using a plugin we built a complex set of Custom Fields to allow each custom post type to show only what we needed it to show. This solution worked great but complicated the code required to make the website function. Dean and I made sure we thought of every possible way our code could end up broken and tried to fix it before it became a problem that needed fixing while maintaining the simplicity required so that anyone could easily navigate the backend with only a quick glance.
By the end of this project, Dean and I had ended up stripping out most of the standard WordPress functions in place of our own custom logic, WordPress ended up mostly a pretty backend for the user to interact with. This was a great learning experience a lot of what I learned doing this project ended up being used on the portfolio site you are on now and in the end, Pawsitive Match Rescue Foundation loved what we had done which is all that mattered to everyone in the group.