In early 2021, I started working with the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami’s flagship art museum, on a series of web projects. The first big task was rebuilding their website, migrating it from Drupal to WordPress.
I handled the migration using a custom WordPress plugin that ran batch ETL processes written in PHP, scheduled with CRON jobs and Polylang Pro for translation integration. PAMM also had several digital collections accessible via APIs, which I integrated into the new WordPress environment using another plugin, again built with batch processing in mind to ensure performance and reliability.
At the same time, PAMM brought in another agency to build a front end using Vue.js in a headless WordPress setup. I advised against going headless for this particular project, since it would require recreating a lot of CMS features, add ongoing maintenance overhead, and make the site less flexible in the long run. But the client wanted to move forward with it.
After the agency delivered an unfinished hand-off, I came in to clean things up and get the front end across the finish line. I fixed major issues, polished the experience, and launched the MVP. The site stayed in use for a few years.
By late 2023, the downsides of the headless setup started to catch up with the client. After some honest conversations, we agreed to rebuild the site using a server-side rendered WordPress block theme, which was the approach I had originally recommended.
The new project kicked off in mid-2024. I wrote batch scripts to reshape the database for the block theme structure, led overall technical strategy, mentored a mid-level dev, did the theme development, build tooling, and test coverage. The work wrapped up in early 2025 and was well received internally.
