Portfolio of Rainbow Forge, A Queer Web Developer And Designer

Fire Island Pines Psychotherapy

Fire Island Pines Psychotherapy Testimonial

"Your work is phenomenal and you are a rockstar! You deserve more than that tip and I will recommend you to anyone who asks(individually as requested) thank you for being honest and you’re a wonderful human. Hopefully we get to work together again in the future as well🫶🏽✨🪩"
Mathew Skrezyna-Wunsch, LCSW-SIFI
Psychotherapist and Founder
Fire Island Pines Psychotherapy

Domain.com to WordPress Rebuild based on Canva Design for fireislandpinespsychotherapy.com

Weird, Warped, and Kinked Designs

Weird, Warped, and Kinked Designs Testimonial

"Dude!! Rainbow is a true professional—knowledgeable and incredibly patient with those who are new to website building. What truly sets them apart is their exceptional customer support—quick, clear, and incredibly helpful every step of the way. Not only did they offer expert guidance, but they also provided valuable insights that elevated my site beyond what I had imagined. If you're looking for a reliable, intuitive, and supportive website builder, look no further. Highly recommend!"
WW&W Desings Limited
Posted on Google Business Listing
By weirdwarpedandkinked.com

Design and Build of WordPress eCommerce Store weirdwarpedandkinked.com

All Together Outdoors

Canva to WordPress Rebuild and Redesign for alltogetheroutdoors.com

VNC Therapy

Wix to WordPress Migration for vnctherapy.com

Human Scale Art Space

Rick Colson's Testimonial

"Finding a responsible, responsive web developer can be a challenge. And if you do find one it can be excessively costly. Rainbow Forge is a whole different resource. Reliable, cost effective and technically competent. Plus, they’re easy to work with. They did an outstanding job on our Website, handling design and technical challenges and a complex migration with ease."
Rick Colson
Director
Human Scale Art Space

Website Build Based on Photoshop Design for HumanScaleArtSpace.org

How it Began

Rick Colson was one of my very first clients when I started doing this work. I had responded to his CraigsList post asking for assistance after a previous developer left him hanging when it came to working on his business's website, ecovisuallab.com. Turns out, Rick was so satisifed with my work, as he described in the testimonial above (my very first one), he decided to hire me again to build the website for his new non-profit arts education venture.

Our Work Together

As last time, Rick had a very clear idea of the look that he wanted the website to have. And just like last time, he already had drawn up the layout and color palette etc. on a photoshop document. After Rick decided that he wanted to upgrade his existing hosting plan with siteground instead of getting a new one, I got to work bringing his vision to life. Within a few days, I build the photoshop design Rick had created into a full fledged website, along with events set up via WordPress blog posts for easy editing and updating in the future.

Lessons I Learned

One of the main things I learned in building this website was the ease with which a very simple event announcement website could be set up by repurposing WordPress's blog functionality to create event listings instead. Obviously there are plugins that would do this better and with much more sophisticated features, such as the Events Calendar, but for someone who simply has a number of events and needs to be able to easily list them, and plans to either do registrations offsite or manually via contact form submissions, there is no need for such a plugin.

What We Accomplished

Human Scale Art Space now has a website to use not only for event publication and soliciting registrations, but also for grants and 501c3 applications, etc. Rick Colson was very satisfied with the work that I did bringing his vision to life, and I offered a tutorial both to him and to the person he hired to take on the task of updating the events. The events system is easy and there's a built in archive for past events, all the updater has to do is change the tag of the post from Upcoming Event to Past Event, and the listing will automatically be displayed only on the past events page, thanks to Kadence Blocks.

Future Plans

At this time, I believe the future of Human Scale Art Space is bright, and their website is user friendly, easily navigable, and easy to update and edit for their staff members. Perhaps someday Rick might decide to have the event registration and payment processing system set up on site, in which case I will always be happy to assist.

Dulcinea Alex Pitagora

Wix to WordPress Migration for dulcineapitagora.com

Kink Doctor

Wix to WordPress Migration for kinkdoctor.com

Blue Heron Therapy

Blue Heron Therapy's Testimonial

"Rainbow Forge built me a fully customized website, as well as exploring cost-effective options for running the website. The website was exactly the aesthetic that I envisioned. Although I have little experience with building a website, Rainbow Forge was able to easily and patiently explain the ins and outs of being able to edit my own website into the future. Rainbow Forge is not only knowledgeable and skilled, but a true joy to work with! They were quick to respond, and tended to all of my questions as a therapist building a website for the first time. If I needed skills like this in the future, I would be sure to choose Rainbow Forge. Their work ethic, knowledge, creativity, and patience made the experience enjoyable, and I will certainly be collaborating with them in the future with other projects."
Haley Witt
AMFT
Blue Heron Therapy

A Therapist's Website, Blue Heron Therapy

How it Began

Haley contacted me after having seen one of my Lex posts, and mentioned that they needed a website to prepare for when they would be ready to start their own practice. From the very first time we met, I was so eager to work with them because their perspectives on mental health were almost perfectly in alignment with my own.

Our Work Together

If all of my clients were as enthusiastic and generous with praise, I'd have a lot bigger ego. Despite the fact that they wanted the design of the website to be very simple and minimalistic, they were so enthusiastic and excited about having a website of their very own. Once we had the bones of the site set up, we had to wait a while before they were able to schedule a photoshoot for the pictures to actually be used on the site. And once that was done, I guided them through the process of purchasing hosting and registering a domain, and migrated their website from the free hosting provider where I'd built it and kept it in the freezer for the time between me finishing up the first draft of the design and the photoshoot being completed.

Lessons I Learned

This project I think really taught me that sometimes in this gig I will need a lot of patience. Because of the fact that the website wouldn't be fully finished until we had the headshots of my client, I had a lot of downtime between actually building the site and then finalizing everything. I think had my client been less of a generous, perfect-client type, they'd have been a little pissed off at how much I was pestering them about when they wanted to finish up their website. So yeah, next time, I need to give people the time and space they need to bring me the content that they want on their site, rather than rushing them because I myself feel the need to be a perfectionist and try to finish each job before I move on to others. Not that that's at all realistic in the life of a freelancer.

What We Accomplished

Blue Heron Therapy has branding, a logo, and a website designed and built that Haley loves, and knows how to make changes to themself if they ever need to do so. I think in this specific instance, my greatest accomplishment wasn't actually designing or building the site, because the design was so minimalistic, but rather, being able to teach my client exactly how to do pretty much each and every thing that I did to build their site, because it was so small. It is my hope that if they ever want to do so in the future, they will be able to expand their website themself without needing to hire someone like me thanks to the multiple tutorial sessions we did.

Future Plans

Next steps for Blue Heron Therapy include some search engine optimization work, as well as making a ton of directory listings, so that they can begin the process of finding clients for their private practice. As for me, I am happy to say that if I ever move to California and need a therapist (and can't find someone who thinks about psychology the way that BHT does and also isn't white, of course), I know exactly who I'll be working with. Plus, they want to be a part of my barter economy directory, so hopefully someday soon I'll have the time and energy and resources to set that up so that more people can get to know Haley Witt of Blue Heron Therapy.

MUCK House Herbs

eCommerce Website for Online Herb Shop, muckhouseherbs.com

kittybat art

Chambers Pottery

Chambers Pottery's Testimonial

"It was great to work with Bri, they were super responsive and helpful and happy to explain things when I didn’t understand. It was also easy to communicate with them and act as a go between for them and my boss. My boss, who is not very tech savvy, found it pleasant to work with them as well and appreciated their communicativeness. 10/10 have recommended"
Anny Chen
Ceramicist at
Chambers Pottery

Redesign of chamberspottery.com

How it Began

Believe it or not, I never actually directly interacted with my actual client. Someone who works for Chambers Pottery happened to see my posts on Lex, and asked me if I'd be willing to take on redesigning their boss's website. Chambers Pottery's previous website had been left in a half-finished state by a previous designer. My client despised how it looked and felt, and didn't understand how to make changes to it. She hadn't even been able to add her pottery class schedules to her website, and was being bombarded with spam, basic questions, and otherwise useless contacts due to the previous designer's decision to link nearly half the buttons that existed on the site directly to her email address.

Our Work Together

My journey began with a video call with her employee, my co-designer and liaison on this project, where we looked at previous versions of chamberspottery.com that my client had liked more. Based on the oldest version we could find, which was the one the client communicated (through my invaluable liaison, of course) she liked the most, I started work on the redesign on a subdomain, so as to prevent downtime for site visitors. By the time my first draft was nearing completion, there was still no sign of the copywriting or images that my client was preparing. Instead of panicking, I decided to pivot and move the free tutorial session (for once not given directly to the client, but rather her employee) up, so that my collaborator could learn more about how to use WordPress, and upload the content whenever her boss was ready to do it. And while we waited, we decided that embedding the class schedule on the old website that was still live was the best course of action. With the Google Sheet embedded, my co-designer took over the responsibilities of communicating with her boss and determining what changes needed to be made to the design to make it more to her boss's liking, and determining what content had to be prioritized before the new site could replace the old one.

What We Accomplished

Within 1 day of moving new.chamberspottery.com to chamberspottery.com, two new contacts who would've previously either not contacted Chambers Pottery at all, or sent a generic question about schedule that may have been missed, had looked at the updated website, the embedded schedule, and submitted the newly built contact form with Cloudflare Turnstile bot protection to ask to enroll in specific classes. Because of our work together, chamberspottery.com will have a reliable way to update their schedule easily through google sheets, and have those changes automatically updated on their website. My client will have a website she doesn't despise the look and feel of to represent her business, and won't have to field ] hundreds of confused emails every month from potential students who haven't found the information they need on her website, and from bots and scammers. Her employee will know how to handle the more complicated aspects of WordPress design and content editing and uploading, and will be able to take that on as a new job responsibility, if they so choose. No longer will chamberspottery.com be incomprehensible, even to the people who actually work there.

Lessons I Learned

I have learned that SEO can be quite fickle and that redirection rules are essential if any content at all gets changed. After the relaunch of the new site, my client's website lost a decent amount of traffic. However, after setting some redirection rules and rewriting some of the copy to be more SEO optimized, their website began ranking higher in searches for pottery classes in NYC, and their level of traffic is restored to higher than the monthly average.

Future Plans

I taught my collaborator everything they needed to know not only to maintain their boss's website if needed, but also to move their own website to WordPress in the future once their current website's hosting plan expires. chamberspottery.com will not require any major updates, aside from the content upload of images and text that my collaborator will easily be able to handle as her boss gets them ready. And my client will be able to utilize the most important parts of her website, the class schedule and incoming contacts, without having to leave the far more familiar environment of Google Drive. And I sincerely hope that I will someday have a chance to work with my collaborator again, as it was a genuine pleasure to get to know them and collaborate on this project with them.

Queer Behaviors

Queer Behaviors Testimonial

"The [tutorial] videos are immensely helpful! I think I'm good from here... happy I have some instruction should I want to play around with the function... I'm extremely grateful to have met you; the work you've done is invaluable"
Chrissandra Andra, MA, MS, LCSW, SIFI
Founder and Psychotherapist
Queer Behaviors

Full Website Design and Development For queerbehaviors.com

Genesis Rogue

A Visual Artist's Portfolio, gnsis.pages.dev

Multilingual Movements

Multilingual Movements' Testimonial

"Choosing Rainbow Forge was the best decision for our website. Despite lacking web development experience at the time, they helped us create a platform that showcases our expertise in language justice, and set up email accounts using our domain for grant applications. I really like the website design they came up with without much input from us, and in a very short timeframe. If you're looking for a developer who strives to fully understands your needs, and/or just have a project that needs to be completed very quickly, I highly recommend Rainbow Forge."
Rebecca Chowdhury
Language Justice Worker
Multilingual Movements

HyperSpeed Website Design and Build multilingualmovements.org

When I was first approached to build this website, I had previously only built around 2 other sites using WordPress for people I knew personally, over the course of a few weeks if not months. This project, with its timeline of 'we need this done by the end of the weekend so we can apply for a grant,' therefore, was a rather challenging experience for me. The organizers of Multilingual Movements didn't have much in the way of design inputs or choices, so I was essentially left to my own devices to design and build the whole website from scratch. At the time, I did the best I could in the time I was given (i.e. about 3 days).

Now, looking back at it, despite my everpresent imposter syndrome, I'm quite proud of what I accomplished in the amount of time I had, and the client was happy with the website. I'm very glad that I had the chance to work with them, as I believe their mission is vital, and they deserve to get support to increase their capacity for running Language Justice Trainings from NGOs and grant foundations interested in reducing linguistic barriers preventing people from participating in movement and organizing work.

Silver Productions

The Only Website Using Squarespace, brandymsilva.com

Silver Productions had unfortunately already paid for an annual Squarespace plan, and their refund window had passed. So, I designed their website using Squarespace, and for me it solidified an opinion that I already held that Squarespace's marketing campaign about it being easy to use is rather dubious. While the drag and drop functionality is cool, the editor is Slow AF and also certain choices that they have made about where to put specific settings and options in the editor menu make no sense to me. There are also numerous things that my client wanted in terms of design and functionality that are simply not possible to accomplish for an average person using Squarespace due to its supposed ease of use, despite it being barely an inconvenience on self hosted WordPress or static HTML.

For instance, they wanted the heading font in the hero section to be more similar to their logo font. In order to accomplish this without changing EVERY other heading to have that same font, I had to go and look in the developer tools to figure out what Unique ID was assigned to that H1 tag, and then code custom CSS to change the font for only that tag. Meanwhile, on WordPress, changing the specific font of only one element takes approximately 3 clicks, and perhaps even less. There may have been an easier way to accomplish this but Squarespace doesn’t have the best documentation, nor much in the way of online resources.

Anyway. I'm getting off topic. I'll save the rest of this rant about Squarespace and its many shortcomings for when I start a blog. For now, let me just say that it was a pleasure to work with Silver Productions, their filmography looks amazing, and I hope that they have great success in their endeavors, and to help with making the website aspect of their future endeavors easier, I will be rebuilding their website on WordPress when their annual Squarespace plan expires. Finally, not only does Squarespace suck as a website builder, it also have a very restrictive iframe policy applied by default, so I can't provide you a live preview here. Click here to go check out brandymsilva.com.

EcoVisualLab

EcoVisualLab's Testimonial

"Finding a responsible, responsive web developer can be a challenge. And if you do find one it can be excessively costly. Rainbow Forge is a whole different resource. Reliable, cost effective and technically competent. Plus, they’re easy to work with. They did an outstanding job on our Website, handling design and technical challenges and a complex migration with ease."
Rick Colson
Master Printer/Owner
EcoVisualLab.com

WordPress.com to Self Hosted WordPress Migration for ecovisuallab.com

When I found EcoVisualLab's Craigslist post seeking a WordPress developer, unfortunately they had already hired another developer, been ghosted by said developer, and built the website themself using wordpress.com, which is vastly inferior to self hosted WordPress (Why, you ask? YAY I get to rant! Click here😸). So, they were understandably cautious about hiring another developer who might leave them in the lurch.

To reassure them that I could recreate their vision exactly as they had already built it themself on wordpress.com, I first built the site using a free WordPress host. When they were satisfied with the fact that the design was copied precisely from what they had built, then I migrated the site to a subdomain on their hosting provider. Then, I backed up their old HTML website and delivered it to them in a zip file, and finally, when they were fully satisfied with the self hosted WordPress website, and understood how to update and change the site to their liking later on, we migrated the website again to their main domain. It was a pleasure working with them, and they even gave me a tip, as well as writing me a very nice testimonial that you can read below.

Anisha Kohli

Wix to WordPress Migration for ak0hli.com

Ak0hli.com was my first pay-what-you-can BDS Movement Solidarity Wix migration project. I quickly found out it was impossible to directly move a website from Wix (this is one of the reasons why I complain so much about closed, proprietary ecosystems like Wix and Squarespace). Essentially, the previously existing website becomes no more than a design guideline file, not much different from a PDF.

Anyway, so on with the story. The client decided that because the website wouldn't exactly be getting a lot of traffic, nor need to be visible in search results, their priority was to keep the costs associated with it as low as possible. Therefore, I recommended that we use tinkerhost.net (a free WordPress host that allows for connecting a custom domain to your website for free) to host their site.

Because on free hosting plans the host reserves the right to delete your account without notice at any time, I made sure to provide my client backup files for migrating their website, along with detailed instructions on how to use said files to migrate the site to another host. One thing that we struggled with was enabling SSL, due to tinkerhost's support for Cname record domain connection being new, and automatic SSL installation not being possible on tinkerhost.

Despite the complication in maintenance that this will cause, I'm confident that my client will be able to handle it, and if not, I will always be here to help them figure it out. After all, if the result is that you get to host your portfolio website for free (the only cost they're paying for, and will pay for till they decide to upgrade, is the yearly domain renewal price), and ALSO get the ease of editability that WordPress provides, wouldn't you?

M.Gaux Media

The One That Got Away, mgaux.media

This website, despite still being unfinished, is probably my favorite website that I've worked on. The client in this case provided me a good amount of design input, and I enjoyed collaborating with them very much. I implemented custom CSS code within WordPress Kadence theme, using a child theme, to make the footer buttons work with the moving background that I chose.

Speaking of the background, I liked the background animation that I chose so much that I went and followed the tutorial that it was from on medium about how to make particle waves in Unity Engine, and the background that you see on my website is a result of my efforts to replicate the instructions in that tutorial.

Unfortunately, my client got too busy to finish the website, so the work will unfortunately never be finished. That said, I do love the idea of a platform for QTPOC artists to showcase their work, and be supported by public donations directly to the artists.

Anthology Journals

Wix to Hosted WordPress Migration for Anthology Journals Online Store

How it Began

When I first reached out to Anthology Journals, it was after an online event we both attended, and to be honest I didn't expect to hear back. But they ended up being one of the nicest, kindest, most generous people I've ever met in my life. To anyone who may be reading this after getting a cold email or something along those lines from me, I apologize, but if I keep meeting people like Anthology, whom I would be honored to call a friend, I'm afraid it's a risk worth taking for me. I hope that if you've read this far on my website, you can be a friend, too.

Our Work Together

Anthology's proprietor was extremely eager to stop paying Wix. So eager, in fact, that they decided that it would be better to take the website down while we worked on building the new one rather than to keep paying Wix monthly to keep their store online. So with that urgency in mind, I got to work. Firstly, I had suggested that we try out a new website builder I'd heard a lot of talk about called odoo.com. Unfortunately, by the time I finished buildin the website and it came time to push it live, it turned out that despite having an odoo website being free, there were several limitations of odoo that made it simply inadequate to host the webstore of Anthology Journals. So, I started over, and built a brand new website using WordPress instead, without charging Anthology a penny more than we'd already agreed, because it was my idea to try out odoo.

Lessons I Learned

The main thing I learned from this experience was that before designing a client's whole website with a new website builder/technology, I should try it out in as much detail as I possibly can. Thus, I can avoid finding out at the very last minute when the whole site is already built that the site builder actually has an extremely convoluted payment processor linking process which makes no sense even to someone who builds websites for a living. I can't complain too much; after all it is a free service, and it's unrealistic to expect that a free service will be entirely perfect. But now I know that odoo is not something that I can recommend to my clients at least.

What We Accomplished

Anthology Journals' new website is fully built, all that remains is for them to take photographs of their newly made, beautiful, unique, handmade journals and upload them to the website as products for sale. Whenever Anthology Journals does have time to finish that process, I will (try to remember to XD) update this text with the fact that their online store is now fully live.

Future Plans

As stated above, the next steps are for Anthology Journals to upload the images of the new journals they've made since taking their old website offline. They are also planning to list events, classes they teach, etc. on an events page on their website. As always, I will remain at their disposal to help make any changes that they might need for reasonable fees rather than charging them a monthly maintenance cost or anything like that which is simply unnecessary for a small store that isn't fully up and running yet. I very much look forward to seeing how their store performs once they are able to fully relaunch their website, and wish them the best of luck!

Polar Arts (via QWD)

Home Page Animated Menu and Mobile Menu Trigger Animation for Polar Arts

How it Began

I first had gotten in touch with Billy of QWD several months ago, when I was seeking fellow queer web designers and developers to collaborate with. Billy was the first among them to give me an opportunity to help out with a task on his client's website, and I will remain eternally grateful for the opportunity.

Our Work Together

Polar Arts already had a website designed on Webflow. Among the things that that design contained were two Webflow specific animated elements, one the home page menu buttons, and one the animated mobile menu trigger. With the guidance of Billy, I undertook the challenge of recreating those two aspects of the design on hosted WordPress.

Lessons I Learned

One of the main things I learned from this experience was that Webflow is actually pretty cool and might be one of the very few site builders that are actually worth considering. I also learned that changing the mobile menu icon only for a generatepress theme site is a bit of a pain in the ass and it's easier to just make a new menu entirely from scratch. And finally, I also learned how to work in a team and communicate my progress and issues I'm having and ask for help from collaborators.

What We Accomplished

I am so amazed by how quickly and skillfully Billy was able to recreate the rest of the webflow design and turn it into a fully functioning WooCommerce store. I didn't speak with the client directly on this project, so I know not whether they are happy with my work, but the animations look very close to the Webflow design, so I sincerely hope so.

Future Plans

It was a fantastic experience to work with Billy, and I will look forward to working with Queer Web Design if they ever want my help with anything at all in the future.

Portfolio

Fire Island Pines Psychotherapy Testimonial

Multilingual Movements' Testimonial

Weird, Warped, and Kinked Designs Testimonial

Blue Heron Therapy's Testimonial

Rick Colson's Testimonial

All Projects

Fire Island Pines Psychotherapy

Fire Island Pines Psychotherapy Testimonial

Domain.com to WordPress Rebuild based on Canva Design for fireislandpinespsychotherapy.com

Weird, Warped, and Kinked Designs

Weird, Warped, and Kinked Designs Testimonial

Design and Build of WordPress eCommerce Store weirdwarpedandkinked.com

All Together Outdoors

Canva to WordPress Rebuild and Redesign for alltogetheroutdoors.com

VNC Therapy

Wix to WordPress Migration for vnctherapy.com

Human Scale Art Space

Rick Colson's Testimonial

Website Build Based on Photoshop Design for HumanScaleArtSpace.org

How it Began

Our Work Together

Lessons I Learned

What We Accomplished

Future Plans

Dulcinea Alex Pitagora

Wix to WordPress Migration for dulcineapitagora.com

Kink Doctor

Wix to WordPress Migration for kinkdoctor.com

Blue Heron Therapy

Blue Heron Therapy's Testimonial

A Therapist's Website, Blue Heron Therapy

How it Began

Our Work Together

Lessons I Learned

What We Accomplished

Future Plans

MUCK House Herbs

eCommerce Website for Online Herb Shop, muckhouseherbs.com

kittybat art

Chambers Pottery

Chambers Pottery's Testimonial

Redesign of chamberspottery.com

How it Began

Our Work Together

What We Accomplished

Lessons I Learned

Future Plans

Queer Behaviors

Queer Behaviors Testimonial

Full Website Design and Development For queerbehaviors.com

Genesis Rogue

A Visual Artist's Portfolio, gnsis.pages.dev

Multilingual Movements

Multilingual Movements' Testimonial

HyperSpeed Website Design and Build multilingualmovements.org

Silver Productions

The Only Website Using Squarespace, brandymsilva.com

EcoVisualLab

EcoVisualLab's Testimonial

WordPress.com to Self Hosted WordPress Migration for ecovisuallab.com

Anisha Kohli

Wix to WordPress Migration for ak0hli.com

M.Gaux Media

The One That Got Away, mgaux.media

Anthology Journals

Wix to Hosted WordPress Migration for Anthology Journals Online Store

How it Began

Our Work Together

Lessons I Learned

What We Accomplished

Future Plans

Polar Arts (via QWD)

Home Page Animated Menu and Mobile Menu Trigger Animation for Polar Arts

How it Began

Our Work Together

Lessons I Learned

What We Accomplished

Future Plans

Like What You See?