- Timeline: July 2020 - December 2021
- Status: the client switched to WordPress in May 2024
- Technologies: CraftCMS, Bootstrap
I built OptConnect’s Marketing site with CraftCMS, an elegant and opinionated alternative to WordPress. Over the years I’ve been able to work on several different Craft projects. The ecosystem is noticeably smaller than WordPress (as to be expected), but in my experience the sites are easier to setup, manage and troubleshoot. Craft is a bit more opinionated, you won’t find any plugins to reskin your entire admin panel, but once you know it you can jump into any Craft instance and be up and running in no time.
OptConnect was looking for a ground up redesign for their entire site and had chosen Craft. I worked with their design team to bring their vision to life.
Over the years I’ve continued to offer support and updates to OptConnect as needed. We used an innovative mobile menu with categories displayed as a horizontal slider at the top. OptConnect had a lot of interesting shapes and elements which made for some front-end challenges. On mobile screens we opted to have the products displayed via a slider (see above) which allowed you to scroll horizontally to see more categories (above). Unique design specifications such as these rounded link buttons presented some challenges due to the varied sizes of the titles and descriptions. Press release cards that appeared on the site. Part of the work I did for OptConnect included migrating a WordPress blog to Craft. This included building a custom search tool with CraftCMS. Blog search The final site was OptConnect’s main marketing resource for over three years before it was replaced in the spring of 2024. During those three years I would occasionally provide support or help the marketing department build new content types in the CMS but for the most part once the project was turned over it ran smoothly.