Non Profit | Build, Improve | 2022 – 2023, 3 months | Website Link
Project Overview:
I built the Zero Waste San Diego website with Elementor and reduced the site weight through database optimization from 323MB to 74.5MB (76.9%). Zero Waste San Diego is a non-profit that educates and drives sustainable living by providing sustainability resources and repair events for San Diego residents.
Table of Content:
- Introduction
- Goals
- Main tools & plugins
- Execution, issues encountered, & solutions
- Results
- Testimonial
Introduction:
I was hired by Michelle Mayther, owner of Minty Made, a Seattle-based sustainable design agency at that time, to build a new website for Zero Waste San Diego. We got to collaborate with Laura Anthony, Director of The ZWSD who runs the website.
Goals:
- Rebuild the entire website with Elementor based on Michelle’s design mockup and web copies. There were 6 pages: Home, About Us, Education, Events, Blog, Get Involved.
- Optimize the website for performance and sustainability.
Main tools & plugins:
Elementor Pro, The Event Calendar Pro
Execution, issues encountered, & solutions
- Set up the site’s assets – e.g. fonts, color schemes, brand logos, image files, etc.
- Built the top navigation and footer and saved them as global elements.
- Built the web pages – For each page I built from the top section to the bottom, and then I edited the responsive design.
- Issue: The sections with the blue waves were the most difficult to create and scale for responsive design. That’s because they were large PNG images making it hard to maintain the proportion without messing up the adjacent sections while scaled.
- Solution: I proposed Michelle with two solutions. The first one was changing the wave pattern to make it repeatable; where the wave’s beginning and end could connect. This meant we could set the wave to repeat and avoid scaling. The second option was embedding the wave as a part of the section’s background image. Then I could create multiple versions for different viewpoints. Michelle went with the second option.
- Edited and tested the functions – including the sign-up form, contact form, event calendar, and blog.
- Refined the pages based on Michelle’s feedback.
- Tested the entire website and optimized the database to ensure its optimum experience and performance.
- Launched the website.
Results:
- The ZWSD website looked uniform and consistent. It showcased its mission, values, and call to action more intentionally throughout the website.
- The website became 76.9% more lightweight after I optimized the database tables; it went from 323 MB to 74.5 MB.
Testimonial:
“Working with Gift on the redesign of the Zero Waste San Diego (ZWSD) website was an exceptional experience. Gift’s clear communication, technical skills, and extensive knowledge were instrumental in overcoming the challenges of this complex WordPress project. From the initial unorganized state of the website to persistent errors during development, Gift showcased resilience, problem-solving abilities, and a high level of commitment that went above and beyond expectations. The final result—a beautifully launched website with optimized performance.
I highly recommend Gift for any web development project, confident in her ability to deliver outstanding results with professionalism and expertise.”
Laura Anthony – Director of Zero Waste San Diego