David Carson

Solo Practice University®

Education, WordPress, BuddyPress

Back in 2008, a former law professor of mine with an active consulting business for solo and small firm lawyers approached me about a big idea she had for an online educational and networking website. She had a large audience of lawyers thanks to her popular blog. And she had a network of experienced attorneys to serve as faculty and mentors. She just needed help executing the idea and building an online community website.

I investigated solutions and found a new beta plugin called BuddyPress that would transform a WordPress site into an online community. Over the next few months, I built a prototype along with a simple landing page to capture the email addresses of prospective users to notify when the site launched.

We launched the site in March 2009 and it was a hit. Thanks to the buzz and momentum before the launch, dozens of lawyers enrolled on the first day and became paying members. Hundreds of lawyers and law students have enrolled over the years and it continues to operate successfully all these years later.

In addition to BuddyPress, the site is powered by several other plugins and custom code that transform it into a private online university. There are dozens of courses with hundreds of video lessons, study groups, forums, user blogs, and more.

This project was selected to be featured in the WordPress Showcase and has been consistently ranked as the top BuddyPress website in the showcase. It is also currently ranked as the top WordPress site in the overall education category.

Go to solopracticeuniversity.com

Ashoka U

Nonprofit, WordPress

Ashoka U is a nonprofit out of Washington D.C. that works with colleges around the world to support their parent organization Ashoka’s vision of a world where Everyone is a Changemaker.

I started working with them back in 2010. They had considered hiring me before that to help build their initial website but they selected different developers with more experience. There were no hard feelings. I would have chosen the other developers too because they had much more experience than me at the time.

But once they launched their new website, the Ashoka U team quickly realized that updating content and managing content was difficult if not impossible. They asked me to take a look. I looked at the source code and it was a mess. The developers had used several different WordPress installations to power the single website. This meant logging in multiple times using different logins to make simple changes around the site. Some of the content was hard-coded into the template making it impossible and costly to make other changes.

The Ashoka U team loved the design but they needed to be able to make quick updates on their own and be better prepared for future updates. So I made a brand new theme that looked exactly like their other theme but followed normal WordPress best practices and coding standards. They were elated and it saved time and money because they could update the site easily on their own.

A couple years later, the Ashoka U team was growing and wanted to launch a new website that reflected that growth and the direction they were heading. We worked together to design and build a new custom WordPress theme from scratch using the _s theme and Bootstrap. It has custom post types for all sorts of content including Changemaker Campuses, videos, advisors, awards and more.

Go to ashokau.org

Liquid Force Kites

Brand, Manufacturer, WordPress

Liquid Force Kiteboarding is one of the top kiteboarding brands and manufacturers on the planet. I have been developing their website since 2010.

They were already on WordPress when they found me so it was an easy decision to continue using it going forward. Typically they provide me with sample design mockups in Photoshop and then I convert those designs into a living, breathing WordPress theme.

For several years we used a child theme derived from the WordPress default theme Twenty Ten. But in 2014 we started fresh and built a custom theme using the _s starter theme and Bootstrap. The site uses several custom plugins to create custom post types for products, team riders, tech features, and “looks” for a lookbook (new in 2016).

Go to liquidforcekites.com

REAL Watersports

Retail, Ecommerce, Magento

REAL Watersports is not your typical surf shop. They are obsessed with being in the water kiteboarding and surfing. But they are just as obsessed with building a company that is completely dedicated to providing the best instruction and products to its customers.

I have been designing and developing their website since 2010. I transformed their existing multiple websites powered by an older cart solution into a single website powered by Magento and helped add integrations that allow product inventory and customer information on the website to communicate with their internal systems.

With several redesigns over the years, we have continually improved the online customer experience and boosted search engine performance across the board. REAL has an internal digital team that is constantly adding new content, products and graphics. I continue to provide support to that team and also manage their Google Shopping advertising program.

The performance of the website has improved dramatically since I became the designer and developer. And I’m looking forward to continue improving it in the years to come.

Go to www.realwatersports.com

TDWPM

Legal, WordPress

TDWPM is a law firm in the Hudson Valley area that offers a multitude of management-side legal services to educational, municipal and private clients. They were referred to me by another law firm I had worked with.

We built a custom WordPress theme using the _s starter theme and Bootstrap. It has custom post types for attorney profiles and events that allow the administrator to quickly update the site from the dashboard. The homepage shows a random background photo each pageload along with a random featured attorney to keep things dynamic.

Go to www.tdwpm.com

Inboard

Startup, Launch Page

Inboard was a new startup launching a Kickstarter project to fund the creation of a powered skateboard that looks and feels like a traditional non-powered skateboard.

Kickstarter was going to be their main hub for online activity but they needed a simple landing page to complement Kickstarter and establish their own online real estate for the future.

I put together a landing page design that featured a large action button directing visitors to Kickstarter along with an image carousel that introduced visitors to the brand and looked great across all devices.

After earning a pass through formal quality assurance testing—the owner’s brother happens to own a top–notch quality assurance firm—the landing page and its resources were uploaded to Amazon Web Services and made available to the world.

This page has been retired now that Inboard has grown and started taking orders directly on their own website.

Frisco Theme

BuddyPress, Open source

BuddyPress is a plugin that adds a social layer to WordPress. You can build just about any kind of online community with it. I had been using BuddyPress on another project for a few years and wanted to give something back to the community so I made a clean and simple child theme called Frisco for Buddypress.

There weren’t many other WordPress themes that worked with BuddyPress at the time so Frisco gained popularity quickly. It was downloaded more than 100,000 times, featured at the top of the themes page on buddypress.org and regularly referenced in articles and guides as one of the best BuddyPress themes out there.

I released several updates to the theme over the next year but BuddyPress changed the way it used themes favoring a theme compatibility pack to allow BuddyPress to work with many more WordPress themes out of the box. This was a great change for the community but meant Frisco’s utility would be coming to an end.

I haven’t made any updates to Frisco in a few years but it still powers hundreds of active community websites all over the world. I’m looking forward to launching a similar project soon.

Frisco on worpdress.org

Brick-N-Motor

Food Truck, WordPress, Google Maps

“Have logo. Need website.”

That’s the only direction I was provided when starting this project. So this quick and fun project for a new Rochester food truck drew inspiration from other food truck websites around the world and then I added some unique touches.

Because so many of its customers would be accessing the website on their phones, building a website that was mobile-friendly was critical. I created a custom WordPress child theme derived from the fully responsive WordPress default theme Twenty Twelve and gave it a simple, unique look.

A food menu is a must-have for any restaurant or food truck website, but this food truck was unique because they changed their menu items daily. There needed to be a way for the food truck owners to update this menu quickly and from their own mobile device. I added a custom post type for menu items so that they could be added or edited from the WordPress dashboard. And then modified the dashboard so that the link to change the menu was more accessible.

I added a similar custom post type for customer reviews so that the owners could build a database of reviews and then added custom code around the theme to display random customer reviews where appropriate. This kept the site fresh and dynamic.

But the most novel function on the site was an integration with the Google Maps API that allowed the owners to quickly enter the current location of the truck using a shortcut in the dashboard. That location would automatically display on the front page of the website using an illustration of the truck over an interactive Google map.

Go to bricknmotortruck.com

JT Music

Band, WordPress

This was my first paid project. I charged only a small fee and spent a ton of hours designing and building it. But I learned a lot in the process and it remains one of my favorite projects.

The goal was to create a custom WordPress theme and design it to match the style of the musician. I purchased a variety of stock photos with a real, authentic look including a napkin, folder, ticket stub, scotch tape and polaroids. Then put them all together in Photoshop and built page mockups. Once the musician approved, I converted that design into a WordPress theme.

It was 2008 so using a child theme—like I would if I were building it today—was not an option. And because my WordPress skills were not great at the time, this theme started its life as the WordPress default theme Kubrick.

After

To achieve the design in the browser, I spent many hours if not days learning how to support layering transparent image files in older browsers like Internet Explorer 6. Those were the days.

This project lived online for several years and withstood many WordPress core updates but the musician decided not to renew her domain in 2014 so the project is no longer available online. Fortunately, the theme is still alive and secured in my GitHub account.