Working as head of the development team at Arena Online I was in charge of building out John Kasich's presidential campaign website in 2016.

The Kasich team's goals for the site were to inform the user of the candidate, raise money, and connect volunteers to regional campaign offices. The majority of development involved building the site in a way content could be managed easily and swiftly.

As the campaign progressed we added more features. My favorite was an interactive map of the U.S. that displayed endorsements for John Kasich by state.

The pace and scale of a Presidential campaign made working on this site rather unique. Great care had to be taken to keep the code base organized and documented. Late night edits became the norm. Watching Kasich in the Republican debates was a rush. Keeping an eye analytics and server load in tandem with Kasich's screen time was a stressful yet exhilirating experience.

Although Kasich dropped out in May 2016, I'm nonetheless proud of the site and the many lessons I learned about running a website on this scale.

Background

As Head of Development for Arena Online, I took the rebuilding of their main site very seriously. The management was confident in giving me complete creative control over both design and development. We got to work, starting with several meetings discussing goals of the site and how to acheive them.

First on the list, we needed fresh photography representing the people and culture of Arena. I followed the hired photographer around, cueing him on the framing I needed to lay things out on the new site. Individual employee shots were also taken, as well as an outdoor company-wide photo shoot out on the Salt Flats outside of Salt Lake City.

As for designing the site, I used Photoshop to lay everything out and get feedback before I got to coding. I wanted simple, bold sections describing what we do and who we are. The slideshow up top features pictures of employees smiling, helping clients, and working hard. The text in the slides illustrate our focus on clients and innovation.

After that, each section has its own main color following the branding: yellow, navy blue, and gray. These following sections provide info on our process, mentality, and our robust client list.

Conclusion

Although the entire company was watching my every move, I was confident in the choices and steps we had taken to get the final product. This is by far my best work at Arena, and I'm proud of my contribution in making the site successful in generating leads and bringing in new clientelle.

My role in building out a site for Utah Media House was simple and exciting. I started by working with their design team helping them make informed desicions for layout and functionality. After the site was designed, I chopped up and coded out the Photoshop files provided to me.

The main feature is the background video at the top of the home page. After converting it to browser-specific formats, I made sure it loads and fades in nicely after the page loads, so as not to affect the PageSpeed score. On mobile, an embedded demo reel takes it's place.

As with all my sites, I try and give the client as much control over editing their content as possible. Not only does this allow them to make as many edits as they see fit, but it cuts down on post-launch development costs. I achieve this using WordPress as a CMS, and a nifty plugin called Advanced Custom Fields. The client can swap out images, text, links, and more, all on their own without ever touching code.

Development and edits took under two weeks, and we were able to launch smoothly soon after that. The sites aesthetics are clean, minimal, and direct. This helps with lead generation and building lasting relationships with their customers. You can check out the site here.

Background

Home page grid