Williams approached Walsh wanting both a visual and functional update to their existing website, based on a proprietary content management system requiring that the IT Department execute content edits. As part of a larger brand refresh, Walsh Branding redesigned their website. WordPress was recommended as a suitable development platform because the site was primarily required to hold static pages. Williams opted to host their site using Automattic’s WordPress VIP enterprise hosting solutions, backed by the core WordPress.com server grid and WordPress’s most active developers.

The WordPress VIP service places strict limitations on code deployments. Very few plugins are permitted, and all theme and custom plugin code must be reviewed by Automattic staff upon Subversion check-in before deployment to production. Among the custom code written for this project was my own WordPress plugin, List Exclusion.

Williams also required that the site be as easy to edit as possible. To accommodate, a custom front-end for the construction of rotator slides was developed and the WordPress text editor styles were overridden with the front-end styles.