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WordPress Website Development: Conscious Life & Style

Let me take you behind the scenes of a bespoke WordPress website and blog I developed for Conscious Life & Style.

Conscious Life & Style is a mindful digital media destination for thoughtful living. Founded by Elizabeth Joy, the platform exists to inspire a more sustainable lifestyle with resources on slow fashion, responsible travel, low-waste living, and low-tox home.

Cat from Gatto, who I’ve been collaborating with since 2018, reached out to me and asked if I could bring her website designs to life for the new Conscious Life & Style website. Of course I said yes as I love working with Cat and making her vision a reality!

The former Conscious Life & Style website was also built on WordPress but it was using a pre-made theme. We transformed their website from minimal and monochrome to bold and colourful. The website design features lots of fun and playful elements while also beautifully showcasing all of the amazing content Conscious Life & Style has to offer.

Let’s take a closer look at some of my favourite features and functionality of the Conscious Life & Style website:

Mega menu with subcategory links and latest posts

The main menu on the website features a mega menu. When you hover over one of the blog categories, such as Fashion, Beauty, Living, or Home, you will find links to the subcategories, as well as links to the three most recent blog posts in that particular category. The blog posts displayed in the mega menu are automatically updated whenever a new blog post is published and assigned to that particular category.

A screenshot of the mega menu on the Conscious Life & Style website. The mega menu features links to the sub-category pages, as well as the most recent blog posts in that particular category.

Affiliate shop built with a custom post type

The client wanted a way to share affiliate links to their favourite products on their website, and so we created an affiliate shop using a custom post type in WordPress.

There are many advantages to using a custom post type to create an affiliate shop in WordPress. Not only does it make it super easy for the client to add products to their shop through the WordPress admin area, but it also allows them to assign categories to each product so similar products can be grouped together.

It also eliminates the need for third-party affiliate plugins or widgets that can slow down the website and that can be difficult to style to match the rest of the website’s design.

The result is this beautiful shop page that is simple for users to navigate. There are links to the different product categories at the top of the page, and if you hover over one of these categories you’ll reveal the sub-categories within this category. This helps keep everything organised and makes it easy for users to find exactly what they are looking for.

A screenshot of the affiliate shop page on the Conscious Life & Style website.

We also added a shop section to the home page, where the seven latest products in the affiliate shop are displayed, along with a link to the main shop page.

A screenshot of the affiliate shop page section on the home page of the Conscious Life & Style website.

Hidden sign up form in the website header

A small but neat feature I love on this website is the hidden sign-up form in the header.

If you hover over the text in the header that reads “Sign up to the Conscious Edit”, a sign up form is revealed. Here, you can enter your name and email address to sign up to Conscious Life & Style’s email community.

An animation showing the hidden sign up form in the header of the Conscious Life & Style website being revealed when you hover over some text.

Pop-out search form in the website header

On the opposite side of the header to the sign up form is a pop-out search form. By default, the search form is hidden, but when you click on the magnifying glass icon, it is revealed.

Here are some kind words from Cat about what it’s like to collaborate with me…

Collaborating with Holly is a true dream. Not only does she have complete technical genius in WordPress, she doesn’t shy away from bold and unique design ideas that are tricky to bring to life. Holly does everything to keep me creatively in control and makes me feel like anything is possible for me and my clients! I couldn’t create the websites I do without Holly!

Are you ready to outsource your website development?

If you’re a web designer who loves creating beautiful websites but hates the coding side of things, I can help!

I specialise in turning designs into fully-functioning WordPress websites that not only look beautiful but that are also functional, strategic and fast.