Our Lady of Lourdes

Redeveloped custom WordPress theme for Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Multi-Academy

After working with Matthew Setchell on St Bede’s Catholic Middle School WordPress website and the bespoke WordPress theme for Church Hill Middle School it was only natural that he should choose me to redevelop the WordPress theme for Our Lady of Lourdes Multi-Academy website.

Tasked with taking the existing theme and moving it away from an overly-complex proprietary page-based shortcode system, I rebuilt the website theme using my own WordPress base theme framework, working in the existing design elements. Once re-built, we optimised the theme for speed and responsivity so that it works across multiple devices and browsers.

IT Manager, Matthew, was as complimentary as ever:

https://twitter.com/LourdesSupport/status/920729950164054021

The new theme is easier to edit for WordPress users of all skill levels and is measurably faster too, scoring more than double on Google’s independent PageSpeed Insights tool.

Why hire Jem for your WordPress project?

  • 5 5

    Magiboards has been working with Jem for 9 years. She single handedly developed and continues to maintain the Magiboards’ website. Our brief to Jem was to design something which we can easily update ourselves. This has worked very well, leaving our budget to be spent on continually adding new areas to the website.

    An excellent web programmer, Jem understands what we are trying to achieve and always delivers. I would highly recommend Jem to any company wishing to use her services.

  • 5 5

    Jem’s knowledge and experience of the WordPress platform has proved invaluable to Source in the time that she has been working with us. Her ability to quickly and efficiently build a WordPress website from the visuals provided is second to none – as is her willingness to support our in-house development team with their WordPress projects. Source would have no hesitation in recommending Jem to anyone looking for an experienced WordPress developer for their project or agency.

  • 5 5

    We needed a quick refresh of our website, which is heavily used by prospective and existing parents, staff and pupils. We needed to make sure that our site was flexible to appeal to all our end users and showcased our school. Working with Jem, I was able to quickly turn my thoughts into a brief, and then into a final product.

    Jem clearly knows what she is doing with WordPress, and her work showcases her considerable knowledge and no nonsense approach. I intend to use her again, when required, and would recommend her to others looking for a developer who knows WordPress inside out.

  • 5 5

    We needed to refresh our website and had lots of ideas; Jem was great as well as providing all of the technical expertise she was able to help us think through our design options and we now we have a great website that not only looks good but has additional features such as YouTube videos & training materials.

Why I love working with WordPress

I've been using WordPress since the heady days of version 1.0 and developing WordPress websites commercially since version 1.5 (released in 2005!)