Education technology
ApolloK12
They had a design. They needed someone to build it. 23 pages, floating elements everywhere, a custom PHP calculator, HubSpot API integration, and a hard deadline. We launched before the school year. On time. On strategy.
- 23 Pages built
- HubSpot API integrated
- On time Hard deadline, met
- WordPress
- Elementor Pro
The problem
ApolloK12 came to me with a design already done. Not a wireframe, not a rough concept. A fully designed layout, built in Illustrator by someone who knew what they wanted visually but wasn't thinking about breakpoints, scroll behavior, or how a floating decorative element behaves on a 375px screen.
My job was to take that design and make it real. All of it. Every page, every element, exactly as intended, responsive across every device, connected to their existing systems, and live before the new school year started.
The old site was fine. Clean enough, functional enough. But it didn't match where the company was headed. They needed something that felt like a real platform, not a brochure. The new design got them there. The challenge was building it without breaking what made it work.
The approach
The first thing I did was build on a staging site. With 23 pages and a hard deadline, I wasn't going to touch the live site until everything was right. Staging gave us room to test, fix, and iterate without any risk to what was already there.
The trickiest part was the floating elements. The design had a lot of them. Illustrated rockets, decorative blobs, overlapping image crops, elements that sat outside their natural grid position. Each one had to be positioned carefully and then tested across every breakpoint to make sure nothing collapsed, overlapped incorrectly, or disappeared entirely on mobile.
Under the hood, I set up custom post types and Advanced Custom Fields to give their team a clean, structured way to manage content without touching code. I built a custom PHP calculator for their program and integrated HubSpot into their forms via API so their sales team could capture leads directly into their existing workflow.
Communication throughout was constant. They knew where things stood at every stage. When questions came up about design intent, I flagged them and got answers before building, not after. That's what kept us on schedule.
When everything was tested and approved on staging, we migrated to the live site. Clean handoff, no surprises.
Before and after
In their words
Paula has been an outstanding partner in developing our Apollo Education Systems website. We had a complex project to code within tight deadlines to meet our goal of launching before the new school year. She was organized, proactive, and worked tirelessly to achieve our objectives. She demonstrated professionalism by not only offering solutions to vexing issues but also going above and beyond to ensure a beautiful final product. If you want to work with someone who genuinely cares about your project, Paula is your go-to person.
The results
We launched before the school year. That was the goal and we hit it. 23 pages, fully responsive, connected to HubSpot, with a custom calculator their team actually uses.
Lou put it better than I could: organized, proactive, went above and beyond. That's the standard. Not just building what was asked for, but catching problems before they became problems and making sure the final product was something they were proud to launch.
They have been in talks with me since about SEO and optimization work. That is the part that did not make it into the original scope. It usually doesn't.
- 23 Pages built and launched on time
- 0 Missed deadlines
- 5.0 Client rating on Upwork
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