Posted March 8, 2011 in CSS, HTML, JQuery, PHP, Portfolio, Web, WordPress

Dominican Sisters Emmanuel Foundation

“I have worked with Chris on several websites and it has always been a fun and pleasant, agreeable experience. He was able to match my concepts to the pixel and was easy to work with. Pixel-perfect positioning was what I required and what Chris delivered.” —Judy Alexander

• EmmanuelKenya.org
• 501(c)3 Organization
• Coding
• HTML, CSS, JQuery, PHP
• Custom WordPress
• Valid HTML5 and CSS3
• 100% Performance Score on Pingdom
• Completion Time: 25 Hours

In fall of 2010, independent filmmaker Dave Alexander contacted me about creating a website to raise awareness for the efforts of Sister Luise Radlmeier, a missionary who rehabilitates refugees fleeing the genocidal war in Southern Sudan. Creation of a fundraising channel was the primary objective. The site includes a bio describing Sister’s efforts, pages for various programs, contact information and a blog. I was given a well-designed spec (by Judy Alexander) and access to amazing photography (by Andy Caulfield), both responsible for the aesthetic success of the project. The home and programs pages feature a slide show powered by Slimbox2 and Innerfade.js. Here are the programs and donations pages:

The blog is a modified version of the Oulipo WordPress theme, which allows Sister Luise to post updates on various goings-on in the field:

If I were to improve the site today, I would create a WordPress child theme to replace the quick (but brittle) adjustments I made to the parent. I would also minify the JavaScript and CSS, recode semantically and use image sprites to reduce HTTP requests where possible. Since it was a non-profit job which the client wanted up as soon as possible, I cut some corners, but even with those low-priority sacrifices and an embarrassingly high homepage weight, the site still fares pretty well on Pingdom:

Sadly, our well-intentioned efforts to raise funds have actually hindered Sister Luise’s efforts. Certain individuals caught wind of the website and developed the misconception that Sister Luise was backed by “wealthy Americans.” This unfortunately led to political and cultural sentiments which interfered with fundraising efforts. In truth, the website was developed by a coder who didn’t charge a single dollar for the project!