Due to the nature of websites breaking, becoming insecure, or just needing a good cleanup, I don’t have specific dates and names in order to maintain client confidentiality. It happens to the best of us! Significant milestones in the “Your WordPress Sucks. Bonnie can fix it.” journey include:

2019 – For busy business owners who assume that WordPress is “set it and forget” (wouldn’t that be nice?), the first launch of WordPress’ “Gutenberg” block editing system broke any website that had an older “custom” theme (that they likely had paid a lot of money for at some point in the past). I had to pause other work in order to rescue several local businesses who couldn’t understand why they couldn’t update their WordPress website anymore. Even in 2023, Gutenberg is still in development and can still be tricky for any WordPress theme that uses its own block editor either on top of, around, or in addition to Gutenberg.

2015 – As social media became more and more of a thing, I began to take on WordPress audits to find and streamline the many, many broken and conflicting social media plugins and tracking codes. Marketing teams were adding them in many different places such as functions.php in their themes, in the code editor in the WordPress admin panel, in plugins, etc. Their corporate security colleagues couldn’t find them all and didn’t have time, so I was brought on in order to track them all down, sanitize them and make sure the various feeds and trackers from all different social media platforms could co-exist together peacefully and securely.

Photo credit: Image by Peace,love,happiness from Pixabay

WTFRecipes.net: Walker-Tovino Family Recipes (what did you think? 🤣). This is one of my own proprietary websites and personal projects. A normal person might simply subscribe to a recipe website. I, of course, started my own WordPress recipe website. I really enjoy WP Recipe Maker, and I’ve only just gotten started!

• Dates: September 2021 – present
• URL: wtfrecipes.net

GrantSoup.org: During the pandemic, I responded to the need in my community by focusing on grant writing. However, that didn’t stop me from geeking out with WordPress! When I got fed up with the messy spreadsheets nonprofits call their “grant research” I did what I always do and hacked my WordPress Website. Grant writing is very competitive. GrantSoup is a plugin for WordPress that helps nonprofits prioritize grant funding opportunities to position their applications for the best chance of success. That may sound obvious, but most nonprofits only apply to foundations where they know someone, or worse, they prioritize by deadlines. Creating GrantSoup helped me help several community-based nonprofits win over $4.5million in grant awards in under 3 years.

At this time, as far as my WordPress portfolio goes, this website is mainly an example of a pre-launch, “let’s collect some contact info while we’re in development” type of website. Since I wrote it while in the throws of meeting grant deadlines, I am in the process of cleaning up the plugin code and making it ready for public consumption as an open source WordPress plugin and will provide code samples once that is ready!

• Dates: December 2020 – present
• URL: GrantSoup.org

After I sold Web Baby Shower, I thought I was going to become a yoga teacher. Well, I did become a yoga teacher. I just didn’t stop using, hacking, or developing in WordPress!

When I was teaching yoga, I couldn’t swallow how the commercial studio platforms charged independent yoga teachers the same as if they were a large studio. So, as per usual, I started to create my own studio management tools in WordPress. Unfortunately, life got in the way of this project really ever getting anywhere besides me using it for my own yoga teaching (which is fine!). I still have some code samples that I will get around to sharing, eventually.

I have recently re-opened yogabrite.net in order to talk about the reasons why I left “the yoga industry” and to refocus my practice on dismantling system racism and sexism, colonialization, and cultural appropriation in yoga (and everywhere!). The image on this page is the stock image I use on the website, by Jill Wellington from Pixabay.

• Dates: 2017 – present
• URL: yogabrite.net

Founder of Web Baby Shower: Web Baby Shower was one of my first proprietary web development projects and is why and how I became a “full stack” WordPress Developer. I founded Web Baby Shower in 2000, ported it to the WordPress Multisite platform in 2013, and sold it in 2017 to the current owners from Asheville, NC. The new owners have completely updated the design (as they should, since it’s been over 5 years!), and are kind enough to still mention me on the “About” page. Note: this is a stock photo since I have sold the website and the new owners have made it their own. Stock photo credit goes to Terri Cnudde from Pixabay (thanks Terri!).

• Dates: 2000 – 2017
• URL: WebBabyShower.com