Skill: PHP

Small job to rectify an out-of-date and unsupported WordPress theme that was breaking a site due to a PHP upgrade

Client had their website built by an agency in 2017 and put live but with a long list of issues that had persisted

I did an audit without a login to wp-admin identifying the most urgent issues that need to be fixed as well as advising on how modification to the site could better serve them.

They contacted me to rectify the website issues. On closer inspection of the theme that the previous website agency had produced for them it was clear from the outset that it had been developed by someone who had very little experience in building a WordPress theme.

There were glaring mistakes such as including another version of jQuery, a javascript framework used for interactive elements. WordPress loads it’s own version of jQuery by default – including another version on top of this resulted in causing most of the issues such as carousel / sliders not working, the popout contact form etc.

None of the CSS stylesheets of two javascript libraries were being loaded correctly within WordPress and there were coding issues with some custom jQuery the developers had written effectively making it redundant.

Most of the plugins and WordPress core hadn’t been updated and the previous developers had modified the core files of some of the jQuery scripts that are in use, making updating those extremely difficult. The SEO plugin they had used had no sitemap functionality.

When adding images to the gallery page, the client had to edit raw HTML which is very error prone.

General Issues

• “Request Information” not working
• SSL Certificate errors (gallery page for example) – normally these occur when a site moves from non-SSL to SSL and the process isn’t carried out correctly.
• Homepage slider not working (appears collapsed and hidden under the header)
• Footer testimonials slider not working
• Two version of jQuery loading, possibly causing the two above sliders to fail.
• Logo not linked to homepage
• Combine Cookie & Privacy policy into one page and remove from main nav. Put a link in the footer. They are ancillary pages that don’t belong in the main navigation. Remove the sidebar from these pages
• Add a “This site uses cookies…” banner

Mobile Issues

• Nav doesn’t show hierarchical nav items properly
• Menu button doesn’t collapse nav when it’s open
• Images not scaling
• Blog sidebar not in correct position (under blog posts) – responsive grid not working as it should.