Freelance
(March 2015 - Present)
In my experience as a freelance WordPress Web Designer, I took care of the customization and optimization of themes for WordPress-based blogs, shops, and news portals. This was back when Elementor wasn't the popular tool it's become in the last few years, so I worked on developing what's called "child themes" to apply any changes my clients would want to them.
So why not apply changes to themes (and plugins) directly? Because theme authors deploy updates every now and then, and if a change has been done to the installed theme, all changes would be overwritten once the theme is updated to its latest release. Developing a "child theme," however, will always overwrite the base theme, and since most of the changes I work on have to do with design and not functionalities, it's usually compatible with any updates.
Can't we just not update them then? Well... we could, but I would never advise it, since updates usually bring security optimizations and tweaks to fix potential exploits, and not updating them can be risky and compromise the whole website, and most importantly, the user database (the same applies to keeping plugins, and even WordPress itself, updated).
The number one risk to the security of a WordPress-based website is not updating it!
Responsibilities
- Developing child plugins and themes.
- Integrating websites with social media.
- Optimizing contents to be shared by users on social media (especially on Pinterest, which was a big deal at some point!).
- Reorganizing and redesigning landing pages and website sections.
- Employing industry and design best practices through the website building process.
- Ensuring consistency between brands and their online presence.
Skills
- WordPress
- Theme customization
- Plugin customization
- Setup and maintenance
- A little bit of jQuery, PHP, and SQL
- SEO
- Keyword Research
- Adobe Photoshop
- Digital Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Marketing Strategy
- Branding