A planning app's site: from Wix to HTML to a custom WordPress theme

A planning and notes app had its site on Wix. A small web agency ran the site.

The agency hired me on Upwork in November 2018 as the only developer. First I rebuilt the site as responsive HTML, then turned it into a custom WordPress theme the client edits himself. The agency came back right after the first contract, and when I checked in September 2026, my theme still ran the product’s site.

Projects

1. 2018

   Wix site rebuilt as responsive HTML

   I moved the product site off Wix as clean responsive HTML, the first step toward WordPress.

   I built the home page with its side pop-up, the app page, blog, blog post, news, terms and privacy, with a mobile menu and animations. I checked each page at several screen widths and worked through the agency’s numbered feedback point by point. I replaced Wix’s audio widget with the browser’s own audio player. The fixed-width text lines broke on small screens, so with the client’s agreement I dropped them.

   The code went into the client’s private repository under its branch rules, with all styles merged into one file for the WordPress step. Later I added 11 tutorial pages, after we agreed the scope from a list.

   This HTML became the base of the WordPress theme.

   Stack: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, jQuery

2. 2018

   Custom WordPress theme from an HTML build

   I built a custom WordPress theme from the new HTML site, with the same look, a news section, forms and code the agency could deploy from its own repository.

   I built the theme milestone by milestone: templates for the two app pages, blog, blog post, news, terms and privacy. With every step I pushed the code and a database dump to the client’s repository, so the agency could set the site up on its staging and then on the live domain.

   News is a custom post type, and the app page’s text and videos sit in custom fields, so they can be edited without code. The contact form and the newsletter sign-up run on Contact Form 7 connected to Mailchimp. I also added share buttons and an audio player for a radio feature.

   The app page weighed about 80 MB. I compressed its videos and served them from the theme, which brought it down to about 5 MB and also fixed videos that stopped playing after pressing Back. Once the agency gave me FTP access, I deployed the updates to the live site myself.

   The site runs on this theme today, in the same theme folder, with the videos I compressed in 2018.

   Stack: WordPress, PHP, MySQL, Bootstrap, Contact Form 7