2023 First Quarter General Update

January went by in a flash, and I have been busy with a variety of projects. I never take on more than I can truly manage, but that line can get blurred if I am not too careful. I have a confluence of projects crossing paths on the kanboard and wanted to float a little update on where some of them stand. Here is the rough schedule for the remainder of the first quarter.

2 Website Launches Scheduled

I will have two brand new websites launching in the next couple weeks. One for a regional home builder and one for a commercial real estate firm. Both of these sites are built on Wordpress/Elementor Pro and have complete custom designs. I can't wait to unveil these to show off the power of Elementor Pro and how customizable it is. The biggest challenge I had while developing the websites was the need for each to display "properties/floorplans" in an easily searchable way, and not be a copy of each other. I was able to use the differences in each client's needs to develop a custom system to accomplish this and develop customized systems.

2 New Client Project

I have started work on a new website for a brand new business in Duncansville. I am happy to be working with Matt and Diane at Sugar Run Brewing Company on a custom website that will allow me to creatively tell their story and build a solid foundation for their advertising and marketing activities online.

For this project I am working a completely custom HTML/CSS (Bootstrap 5 SASS) static website, and Statamic CMS for the dynamic content. This will allow them to update specific pages in the site like the website's menu, events, and whatever else they wish. The power of Statamic is in the ability for me to choose what they can change and I can build a specific blueprint for them to do it. This project expects a quick turnaround and should launch early March.

The second project I cannot disclose much of yet, but the designs and frameworks were approved this week. This will be a static site with a headless CMS. It will be a Gatsby.js project and I am still working with the client on what the best headless option is. I am leaning them toward either a headless Wordpress or Contentful. Although the news broke today that Netlify purchased Gatsby.js so I will take a hard look at that this weekend.

eMBee SEO Refresh and Roadmap to 3.0

I am using the roadmap loosely at this stage. I unveiled a new logo for eMBee SEO to give it more of its own identity. The SEO Dashboard and Website Tools Service had been a bigger initial success than I thought it would be. The current version is 2.8 and released about 2 weeks ago with some rearranging of tools, upgraded white label features for the agency subscribers, and beefed up security on the backend.

I have a rough draft for what I envision will be the 3.0 release and am working it out on paper before releasing anything official. I might actually do a roadmap of features, but it is too early to tell. This project will get a start date of sometime at the end of March when client work finishes wrapping up. Stay tuned.

New Hub Project Planning Begins

With my expanding needs to find a permanent solution to keeping track of the web design projects, my own work, hosting, and the agency work I get I decided to start building a custom project/client portal.

I use basecamp for project management with web design/development now and I use WHMCS to manage the hosting service. I still use notebooks, and the iOS notes app. I really would like to have a self hosted solution to keeping projects, files, approvals, billing, expenses, and client info all in an organized and singular place. Oh and I don't want to spend a ton of money on monthly fees.

I want to expand my knowledge and skills and have a draft of building and designing a portal that solves my specific needs. I would like to build it in a way that I can package it and make it available for other to use. I have sketched out a Laravel based project and identified some packages that I think will allow me to develop this from start to finish. I will be posting about this project along the way laying out the ideas, failures, changes, and successes along the way. This project will kick off in April but I have begun planning and sketching this out already. Stay tuned for more info on this project by end of February.