Web development and design

CMS Migration

During my time as the Web Specialist at Shoalhaven City Council, I picked up where the previous Web Specialist had left off the task of migrating the Council’s major websites from Dot Net Nuke (DNN) to the OpenCities CMS, all as a solo developer.

This project was a massive undertaking, requiring me to design and implement OpenCities themes from the ground up, while also transferring and restructuring all content, including a complete redesign of the websites' information architecture (IA).

The challenge was particularly daunting because OpenCities is a "codeless" CMS, meaning I had no access to the underlying CSS or HTML. To overcome this, I had to develop custom themes using SCSS overrides, injecting HTML and CSS classes via jQuery and custom content lists. This process was both time-intensive and technically complex, yet I successfully completed the migration of all remaining websites within an ambitious 14-month timeframe.

In addition to this, I was responsible for providing support to the seven live websites, doing the research and legwork to completely restructure the council website's IA of 4,000+ pages in one night to address severe usability issues, managing ongoing support and maintenance for both the corporate intranet and developing a new Councillor Portal, as well as addressing daily internal and external customer feedback, managing an emergency broadcasting system across the Shoalhaven, and delivering experience design and accessibility training to internal staff.

The scope of this work, combined with the sheer volume of tasks and the solo nature of my role, as well as the unique brand identities for the subsiduary businesses, made this project exceptionally challenging. Despite these obstacles, I consistently delivered high-quality results under pressure, showcasing my ability to manage large-scale, complex web projects independently and efficiently.

This portfolio

You may have noticed the 'Neocities' domain, which, much like the original Geocities platform, operates as static HTML pages without a CMS. This means that every page of this website is entirely hand-coded by me.

From the HTML structure to the CSS styling, and all of the JavaScript and jQuery scripts powering galleries, modals, accordions, and more —every component has been custom-built.

While most organizations today rely on CMSs for content management and framework delivery, and the majority of my professional work has been within such environments, I believe it's essential for a web specialist to have a solid understanding of foundational coding practices. By returning to this hands-on approach, I've been able to refresh and strengthen core skills that might otherwise diminish in a CMS-based workflow, all while ensuring adherence to modern WCAG accessibility guidelines.

This experience has not only been a rewarding challenge but has also allowed me to reconnect with the roots of web development and maintain a well-rounded skill set.