Website of a photographer in Portugal
About the project and task
A Ukrainian photographer engaged in artistic photography and video filming on Madeira Island contacted us with the task of upgrading a WordPress site. The fact is that the existing WP theme could no longer withstand the fruits of creativity of the photographer with a portfolio of 3 GB, and as a result, it slowed down the site. In addition to the functionality, the client was concerned about the appearance of the website: the design of the site was outdated and generally was getting boring. Therefore, we were required to replace the WordPress theme while maintaining the portfolio that had been accumulated over 4 years.
It seems to be a simple, but at the same time very responsible task. Were we able to migrate the site to the new theme with zero risk? Read our case.
WordPress Theme Customization
The client’s choice fell on the minimalistic, content-oriented premium theme “Kathy”. Neat monochrome design, simple hover animation — nothing distracts the attention of users from the portfolio of a talented photographer.
Old theme:
New theme:
To protect against loss of information, we made a backup copy of the site and activated a new theme on our hosting.
The most valuable media content was transferred manually, the rest (in particular, the blog) was automatically transferred using the Duplicator plugin.
Functional admin panel
To increase the functionality of the site, we have installed additional plugins, namely:
- All-in-One WP Migration — to move the website;
- Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights — for website traffic analytics and statistics;
- NextGEN Gallery — to manage the photo gallery;
- Post Views Counter — for counting and displaying post views;
- Yoast SEO — for SEO-optimization of the site.
We paid special attention to setting up a gallery with a portfolio so that the client can easily add and export photo and video materials. All downloaded content is stored in the media library, where it is easy to search, select and filter files by type or date:
As we noted above, our client actively blogged, which greatly contributes to the SEO promotion of the site. So all the articles, along with other content, successfully migrated to the new topic:
Articles are easy to edit, sort by categories and tags, optimize for search engines and filter by date, SEO metrics, readability, etc.
Site visitors can comment on both articles and photographer’s work:
All comments are stored in the appropriate section and are awaiting publication on the site:
It should be noted that the site performs the function of a portfolio, and therefore does not provide the opportunity to leave a request on the site. Anyone wishing to order a photo session can contact the photographer by phone, mail or by sending a message to social networks or instant messengers.
Only after we tested the theme on different devices, checked the browser console for errors and made sure that the settings did not affect plugin compatibility, we hosted the finished site on the client’s hosting.
The result
The migration of the site to the new WordPress theme with the entire database (plugins, media files and articles) was successful. So, the photographer became the owner of a fresh monochrome portfolio site with an emphasis on photos the main characters of which are happy clients in a paradise in Portugal. Despite the rich portfolio, the site literally flies, both on computers and on smartphones (we are talking about loading speed and adaptability of web pages).
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