This was a reasonably straightforward project: rebuilding the therabill.com site. The design-to-development process associated with this project was more like redeveloping the existing site and facility. The main issue was that the site leveraged a purchased theme that had not been updated when I got to it. The data was intact and reliable, and the database was stock, but updating the theme caused breaking changes. I opted to get the site up and running by creating and switching to a new custom theme.
I used Foundation 6 as the skeleton and the existing site as the design. I copied the aesthetic onto a new theme. I duplicated the functionality and eliminated all the console errors by updating the Javascript and message emitted to the console, which search engines don’t like. Foundation by Zurb is a great starting point for sites with a grid. The developers of that system have solved many of the issues responsive development surfaces.
Along with the Javascript updates, I streamlined the site’s plugins to only a handful of powerful and proven choices. I used Yoast SEO and GitHub Updater to manage SEO and updates. Another configuration I set was toggle the auto-updates for the theme and plugins. There aren’t many plugins, so I’m not worried about placing the site on auto-pilot and letting it run by itself for weeks. I have services that watch the application and alert me to problems, plus my own recurring tasks to manually check the website.