Aquavilla

Aquavilla - homepage

Website: aquavilla.co.nz (site has since been redesigned) - view screenshots

Size: 5-page WordPress website

My professional status: independent web designer/developer

Website client: Jeremy Brown, on behalf of his mum

Dates: August 2013

Categories: Client liaison, Project manager, Website designer, Front-end developer, Responsive web design/dev, CSS-based layout, CSS3, jQuery/JavaScript, WordPress, Small sites

Brief: Aquavilla is a boutique accomodation cottage in Plimmerton, north of Wellington. The owners had had some problems with the responsive WordPress theme that their website was built in, and needed someone to tidy it up, restyle it a bit, and make it work properly. They also wanted a new photo gallery and a contact us form.

Achievements:

  • Restored my client's faith in web developers after they had had some less than ideal experiences trying to get their website sorted - by restyling their site in exactly the way they had asked for, and then going that bit further by tidying up the formatting on each page at no extra charge.

My responsibilities included:

  • Restyling the background and main navigation in accordance with the client's new design requirements
  • Tidying up the Google map page and repositioning the custom Google map within the iframe
  • Adding a gallery page to the website (NextGen Gallery plugin) and uploading the photos to this gallery
  • Adding a form (Contact Form 7 plugin) to the contact us page
  • Extensive testing of the WordPress site, ensuring consistency across the following browsers and platforms:
    • PC: Internet Explorer IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9; Chrome, Firefox
    • Mac: Chrome, Firefox, Safari
    • Responsive: a range of viewport sizes from mobile to laptop
  • Bug-fixing various elements including the gallery in IE6 and the gallery thumbnails and form fields in a range of responsive viewport sizes
  • Tidying up the text and formatting in the other pages on the website, just so that it looked as nice as possible.

Aquavilla - responsive screens

Jeremy and his mum hadn't had the greatest experience with their website up to this point, and so it was my absolute pleasure to be able to restore their faith in the web industry, in a small way, at least.

The WordPress theme is a responsive one, so it was heaps of fun to get my new plugins working properly in all viewport sizes. It's only a tiny website, but I reckon even the smallest site deserves to be as perfect as it can possibly be.