Albany Park Theater Project: running the WordPress side of a Chicago youth theater
Albany Park Theater Project is a youth theater company in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood. I manage and maintain both of its WordPress sites, the main APTP site and the site for its show Port of Entry. That covers the back end, the theme customization and most of the UI work staff ask for.
My roleWordPress developer & site maintainer
BuildWordPress · PHP · Custom theme · Elementor Pro
Two WordPress sites on different stacks
APTP has been making original plays with teenagers since 1997, and the main site holds a lot of that history. Productions, reviews, events, venues, people and a media library of more than 600 items each live in their own custom post type, on a custom theme.
Port of Entry, the immersive show APTP created with Third Rail Projects, has its own site on a different host, built on the Sydney theme with Elementor Pro. Staff bring their change requests for both sites to me, and I make sure donations, ticket links and forms keep working on each.
What I did
Keep both sites current. I handle WordPress core, theme and plugin updates on both sites, plus the hosting, backups and security work that comes with them. The main site runs on WP Engine and Port of Entry runs on its own host, so I keep track of two setups.
Customize the themes. The main site runs on a custom theme and Port of Entry runs on Sydney with Elementor Pro. I customize both: the custom theme's templates and styles on the main site, and the Sydney theme and Elementor layouts on Port of Entry.
Build the UI staff ask for. Most requests are UI work on pages, sections and layouts. I build it inside the existing themes so it matches the rest of the site and staff can keep editing it in wp-admin.
Look after the back end. Content on the main site is organized in custom post types, with Gravity Forms handling forms. Port of Entry collects mailing list signups through Mailchimp. Donations go through Little Green Light and tickets through Arts People, and I keep the connections between the sites and those services working.