Antti Koskenrouta

Roots of She, headed by Jenn Gibson, is a woman-centered collaborative project, whose mission is to tell the story of the female experience, in all of its shapes, sizes and forms. Launched in December 2010 using Blogger, the site soon outgrew the platform’s features. In March 2011, Jenn asked me to migrate Roots of she to WordPress because of the great flexibility the platform offers.

We set up hosting through Bluehost (as suggested by WordPress) and begun building the site. Jenn wanted the layout to be simplistic, so Primepress theme was used as the base theme. The design didn’t work for Roots of she out of the box, so a custom theme was created utilizing WordPress’ child theme functionality. Customizations included a new color scheme, fonts, and the beautiful header image from the old site.
http://www.rootsofshe.com

This is what Jenn had to say about the process:

Created in December 2010, Roots of She is a woman-centered collaborative project, whose mission is to tell the story of the female experience, in all of its shapes, sizes and forms.

The site was launched using the Blogger platform and Photobucket for image hosting. I’d hoped to use WordPress but time was pressing so I didn’t. Switching platforms quickly became something on a growing list of things to-do, but it was something I’d do down the line when time allowed.

I contacted Antti in late February/early March to discuss the practicality and logistics of moving from one platform to another. We went over basic details — what I wanted the site to look like (theme, font, color scheme), what plug-ins to incorporate (Google Analytics, Akismet anti-spam, All-in-one SEO)).

I gave him my dream list and he made it all happen.

Then we got to work : Antti handled setting up the hosting, designing the template, installing plug-ins and widgets, and creating the pages. He suggested changing image hosts, using a contact form page, and creating authors.

But better than any of that, Antti taught me how to manage and maintain the site in its new incarnation. He gave me autonomy and knowledge, with the assurance that I could always come to him with questions.

Which I did, which I still do.