Genesee Building Products

Genesee Building Products is a building product manufacturer located in Stafford, NY.

This site was completed as part of my first internship while attending Saint John Fisher. It also marked my first foray into the realm of freelance-type work. Working alone, I brought GBP from ground zero (absolutely no web presence) to having their full catalog of products online. That means handling everything from web hosting, to choosing a proper CMS (content management system), to styling and doing custom development needed.

This project also marked the beginning of my professional career in Drupal. Up until this project, most of my work had been in WordPress. Due to the ecommerce-like features needed, I knew that WordPress would not be suitable. I began working with Joomla and the much-hyped VirtueMart plugin, but about half-way through entering all of the product into the system, I realized that it was completely obliterating many of the relationships I had assigned. Due to poor documentation and support, I switched to Drupal.

This project accentuated the key advantage of Drupal, which is its community. Using the Ubercart module (in alpha at the time), and utilizing the knowledge of the Drupal community,  I was able to quickly get back to the point I was previously and still finish the project on time. The work here also led to my second internship with Mrs. Riley.