Personal Project
Xcelsior Digital
My own web studio website, custom-built for search, AI discovery, and a measurable performance-focused launch.
Built Mighty
The Art League: Artist Profiles, Site Performance and Image Optimization
I helped build The Art League’s new WordPress theme and plugin, moving the site away from Elementor toward a lighter setup. I also developed a custom artist-profile feature that gives members a way to submit their own artwork for review and possible publication. Along the way, I fixed a Gallery Shop page that was crashing and reduced the site’s image library by about 39%.
A new way for members to share their work
- The organization did not previously have a feature that let members create artist profiles and submit their own artwork. I developed a custom plugin to add that capability.
- Created artist profiles that let members sign up, upload their artwork and submit it to be featured.
- Built separate upload areas for each member, with moderated categories and a review step before anything can be published.
- Added an administrative review screen with a live preview and a before-and-after comparison of submitted changes.
- Delivered the feature through eight sequenced pull requests.
Moving away from a page builder
I also helped build the organization’s new theme and plugin, moving the site away from Elementor to a lighter, faster setup.
Fixing the Gallery Shop
- The Gallery Shop page was crashing with WordPress’s critical-error screen. Its filters were turned off, but the page was still loading about 5,900 products at once.
- Short-circuited the unnecessary product query so the page no longer tried to load the full product set.
- Reduced peak memory use from 445 MB to 208 MB, and the critical error stopped.
- Reduced the image library from about 8.1 GB to about 4.9 GB, reclaiming roughly 3.2 GB of storage across tens of thousands of eligible images.
- Completed the image cleanup without errors.
Result
The Art League gained a member-submitted artist-profile feature with a review process before publication. The Gallery Shop stopped triggering its critical error, peak memory use dropped by more than half, and the image library was reduced by about 39%.
Tools I used, in plain words
WordPress
The content management system behind the site.
Custom theme and plugin
The site’s presentation and functionality, developed to replace its reliance on a page builder and add new features.
Elementor
The page builder the new setup was moving away from.
Product query controls
Used to prevent the Gallery Shop from loading thousands of products unnecessarily.
Image optimization
Reduced the storage used by eligible images across the site’s media library.
Gallery
Screenshots
Select an image to enlarge it.
Other work
More projects
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Seymour Duncan
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