WordPress Development Project Launch: Parfait Not Perfect

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I’m so excited to share my latest WordPress development project launch with you! This custom project was for the lovely Pippa Parfait, who is a Courageous Living Coach. Basically, if you struggle with perfectionism or your inner critic, Pippa is your girl. Throughout the entire project, Pippa’s personality shined through, which made the process so much fun.

The branding and website design were done by the wonderful Kaitlyn Kessler of The Crown Fox. This was our 3rd project together and it was sooo much fun to be able to collaborate again. Kaitlyn is always open to my suggestions and quick to answer questions, which always makes the development process go nice and smoothly.

Framework

This site was built on the Genesis Framework with a custom child theme. While I’ve developed themes from scratch, Genesis is always my go-to for the ease-of-use, frequent updates, and amazing support.

Technology

Here’s an outline of the technology used in this project:

CMS: WordPress
Programming Languages: PHP, HTML, CSS
Plugins
- Beaver Builder
Integrations
- Acuity
- ConvertKit

Let’s dive into a few page-specific features!

Home, About, & Work With Me

The Home, About, and Work With Me pages were all fun ones to work on. The designs were so unique and the copy was a blast to read through while I was getting it all setup.

Each of these pages was built using the Beaver Builder plugin, which is my go-to when page layouts would otherwise be hard for clients to edit. I don’t even want to think about the mess Pippa would have to sort through if it wasn’t for Beaver Builder. Now, instead of having to sort through HTML to change a few lines of text, all she has to do is click the area she wants to edit and go to town. All of the CSS is stored in the theme’s style sheet and I used as little embedded HTML as possible to make sure she wouldn’t have to worry about deleting something by mistake.

Something else you’ll notice with these pages is the use of imagery. I can’t get over how much each picture capture’s Pippa’s personality. However, they also turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as we didn’t have the pictures until after development was complete. Kaitlyn and Pippa did a great job in the design stage of the project, taking their best guess at what kinds of images should be planned for, but there were still some adjustments needed. We all learned the importance of having images before the design stage begins. (But luckily, it still turned out looking gorgeous)

Blog

The Blog page was also a lot of fun. I love how perfectly it matches Pippa’s brand and how Kaitlyn didn’t limit herself by what a typical Blog page looks like.

Once we got ahold of the final images, we decided to hide the post titles and meta to remove redundancy and keep everything looking clean. But don’t you worry, those post titles are still there for SEO purposes, you just can’t see them. 😉

I also love the categories over in the sidebar. The little yellow triangles took some CSS trickery, but they add such a nice touch!

On the individual blog posts, something fun you’ll see is a custom opt-in section. Instead of Pippa having to worry about how to format that section or creating graphics, all she has to do is add an image and update the text in a template I gave her and she’s on her way to growing that email list.

Memos From Mildred

And the last page I’ll touch on is Memos From Mildred.

Memos From Mildred is going to be a place for Pippa and contributors to share what’s really going on inside their minds. There’s no way I can do it justice, so head over to the page and check it out. I can’t wait until they start filling in because it will be epic!

We set this page up as a custom blog page. Each Memo is created as a blog post and marked with a “Memo From Mildred” category. From there, I did a little magic to let the theme take care of the rest.

Final Thoughts

While the overall technology and coding aspects of this theme were simple, there was a whole lot of CSS that went into making it look just right. It’s nice every once in a while to have a project where I can sit down with my favorite podcast and spend a few days making things look just right, instead of coding in custom functionalities. Keeps it all fresh 🙂

And in case you’re wondering if I was the only one who loved the project, here’s what the designer, Kaitlyn, had to say:

I knew that bringing Krista on to this project would be a fun and good fit. We’ve gotten into a good groove working together, she’s accessible, and I feel comfortable asking questions. I also know that Krista is great with clients, quick, and easy to work with. During this project, Krista was organized and clear with what she was doing and when, which I always appreciate. If you don’t love coding, don’t stress yourself out doing it, Krista is so great to work with!