The Cast Iron Chef Site Redesign
You really never know who you'll meet online. One minute you're talking to someone on OKCupid. Fast forward six years and this person has not only become one of your dear friends but has long since been nicknamed your "Dad" despite being younger than you. Also, you're doing a website overhaul for a friend of a friend of theirs. Who also became your friend during those six years.
Rambling aside, I'll get to the point: my first "real" freelance project was a delicious one. A friend of mine asked me if I was interested in helping out her classmate, a young chef who specialized in tasty Cajun dishes. I was a little nervous, having never taken a true blue client before, but I agreed to help since the task seemed to be pretty straightforward. All I had to do was switch her WordPress theme to something nicer-looking and easier to use, then I had to fix her online shop so she could re-open it. Easy peasy.
The chef in question was The Cast Iron Chef.
Rambling aside, I'll get to the point: my first "real" freelance project was a delicious one. A friend of mine asked me if I was interested in helping out her classmate, a young chef who specialized in tasty Cajun dishes. I was a little nervous, having never taken a true blue client before, but I agreed to help since the task seemed to be pretty straightforward. All I had to do was switch her WordPress theme to something nicer-looking and easier to use, then I had to fix her online shop so she could re-open it. Easy peasy.
The chef in question was The Cast Iron Chef.
In retrospect, I had to do a bit more work than I expected, because sometimes, formatting left over from a prior theme does not play nice with a new theme. There were also some parts of Dyad 2, the WordPress theme we chose, that felt out of place. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult to fix little bits here and there in order to tailor the site into the handsome beast it is today. I have to admit that it's mostly a handsome beast because of the food featured on it - a theme can only do so much if you don't have a good variety of content, and thankfully Chef Emily has some pretty tasty content.
And God bless her, she puts the recipe before she puts the backstory Food bloggers and chefs, take note. This is how you do it.
The site uses the standard, easy-to-use blog post format that WordPress is known for so Chef Emily has been able to consistently post her delicious cooking on the site long after I left it in her hands. At her request, on the bottom of the site near the usual social media links and a subscriber form, I used a neat little widget to add her "Kitchen Dancin" playlist from Spotify.
The site uses the standard, easy-to-use blog post format that WordPress is known for so Chef Emily has been able to consistently post her delicious cooking on the site long after I left it in her hands. At her request, on the bottom of the site near the usual social media links and a subscriber form, I used a neat little widget to add her "Kitchen Dancin" playlist from Spotify.
