Eric Schmid

About

I am a website developer, working primarily with WordPress, to create bespoke website experiences. I have worked as a freelancer/contractor with a handful of digital agencies, as well as directly with clients. The majority of my work for the last 10 years has been with WordPress projects (90%+ of projects are WordPress).

How I Work

I will take a brand style guide, or (better yet) a PSD or Figma layout, and turn them into a clean, SEO-friendly WordPress website. I work on projects both as the solo developer or as part of a design & dev team, on projects from conception through to completion, on smaller projects to improve and add features to existing websites, or taking full ownership of 'inherited' websites as the new developer for a more long term approach.

Strengths (at least what I perceive as my strenghts): Solid collaboration with the designer and PM on a project from conception to completion. Proactive with designer to come up with ideas for 'interactivity / the litle things' on sites from static PSD/Figma layouts as well as unique ways to solve website issues.

Admitted Weaknesses: I am not a designer. I think that I have a good eye for fonts, and an OK eye for color. However, I 100% believe that projects designed by actual designers end up looking a lot better and the projects tend to be more efficiently completed.

What Sets Me Apart from Your Typical WordPress Dev

I feel that I am a flat-out gladiator at troubleshooting broken/hacked WordPress sites, fixing visible error messages and issues after plugin or WordPress core updates, fixing issues after php updates, addressing performance issues, rooting out poorly-behaving plugins, or fixing pages or parts of pages that "never really worked the right way." I have had 10-15 projects a year over the past 5 years that are 'WordPress Rescues' where I am brought into to fix sites that weren't working liking the site owners wanted (or are flat out broken and not loading).

My Solutions Stack

The Basics: HTML, CSS / SCSS, jQuery, php, vue.js, css frameworks such as Bootstrap and bulma, MySQL.

The Details:

• Custom WordPress theming and template dev.
• Experience with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) both with sites entirely templated off of ACF fields/groups, or templates with mixed ACF fields and standard WordPress pages.
• Page Builder experience with WPBakery, Elementor, Site Origin. Experience creating custom page building widgets / elements for both WPBakery and Site Origin projects.
• WordPress plugin customization via CSS, jQuery, php.
• Experience with development using Genesis framework for WordPress. Experience building custom themes from the _s (underscores) starter theme. An agency that I currently works with starts all of their projects with The7 theme and we develop a child theme from that theme.
• Complex form development such as an interactive flight cost calculator for a private jet company and a concrete project estimator for a concrete contractor.
• Comfortable editing functions.php to add functionalty to WordPress sites without overusing plugins, extending existing / commercial plugins.
• Backend / server experience in setting up and maintaining both managed and un-managed VPS's; familiarity with cPanel/WHM. Comfortable editing & setting up DNS records.
• A solid 7/10 with on-page SEO and content optimization for Google.
• Work with APIs for dynamic site content from CRMs, Property Management software and Non-Profit Membership Management programs.
• Finding/writing custom jQuery to extend WordPress functionality. Most of the jQuery I produce is to accomplish a specific task or function on a website that cannot be done purely through HTML & CSS or an existing WordPress plugin (or the existing WordPress plugins are too bloated to use). Much of these micro jQuery scripts are conceptualized on Codepen before intergrating into WordPress site.