Mate v Mate

Project Overview

Mate v Mate website is the first project I’ve worked on with several agencies at once, all acting as a different layer in the development of the site. During the development process, I had the role of translating the design into the actual website. Although the client did not aim for a pixel-perfect translation, they do want the site to match the design as much as possible.

Mate v Mate website was built upon WordPress by the client’s request using a custom theme along with many plugins that complement the design and functionality. Not only that, several of the feature that the client requested does not exist using the standard WordPress installation, therefore I had to learn how it works and “hack” the custom theme and added custom options and functionalities that will fit their requirements, including the integration with their own component that provides donation functionalities. The drawback of this method is that the custom theme will not be updatable without replacing each file that had been modified.

As the person who developed the Mate v Mate completely from the ground-up under Scorch, our agency was also tasked to deploy the Mate v Mate website from the staging environment to the live environment, as well as providing time-limited support for the website itself.

Although I am quite familiar with WordPress, with it being the platform that this website is based on, this project gave me a unique experience by having me actually learn how WordPress work at the backend, as well as integrating the site itself with another platform. It also gave me the experience of managing the client’s expectation, as well as the complexity of having several agencies working together at once.

Mate v Mate website was completed at the end of January 2013.