Redesign and Relaunch of the Delaware State Parks Website
This work sample covers one of my biggest projects at DNREC: the complete redesign of the Delaware State Parks website, including new hosting, back end, front end, user experience, and content migration. When I took over the site in 2021, it was already five years old and built on an early version of .NET. Every update had to be made by hand in the code. When that version of .NET reached end of life in September 2023, the agency decided to hire an outside vendor to rebuild the site.
I was involved from start to finish. I took part in vendor selection, helped write the system and technical specifications, and reviewed the contract. I helped manage the vendor’s project timeline and deliverables and served on the design review committee. I also worked through DTI’s system architecture review and was part of the final approval to begin development. We chose a fully customized WordPress platform hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). That gave staff a content management system, custom interfaces for programs, special templates for park pages, and full control of the content.
During development, I guided the vendor’s technical team on the design of each program interface (Camps, Concerts, School, and Main Programs), the park pages, the page templates, and the plugins. I set up user access roles, created all of the program category codes, helped design the program load interface and file layout, and had final sign-off on every component. I then ran the entire migration myself over three months. I moved more than 500 images and files, added meta tags, laid out content, created page banners, managed internal and external links, and wrote SEO content, all while keeping the old site running. The new site went live on November 21, 2024. Screenshots of the new site are included at the bottom of this page.
The results were strong. In 2025, visits and page views rose 22% over the old site, with 1,212,211 unique users and 3,859,153 page views. So far in 2026, the site has had 1,097,159 unique users and 3,190,432 page views.
This sample demonstrates these skills:
- Project management: managing timelines, deliverables, and sign-offs across a full project lifecycle.
- Vendor and contract management: vendor selection, writing specifications, and contract review.
- Leadership and collaboration: working with the vendor, a design committee, and the DTI architecture review board.
- Technical skills: WordPress, AWS hosting, access management, and data load design.
- Content and digital marketing: content migration, SEO writing, meta tagging, and page design.
- Time management: running a three-month migration while maintaining the live site.
How it connects to business knowledge and professional experience
This project connects most clearly to management. It followed the full project lifecycle I study in my business courses: identifying a need, selecting a vendor, setting requirements, planning, overseeing delivery, and evaluating results. Managing an outside vendor also meant protecting the state’s investment by making sure the contract delivered what we paid for.
It also connects to marketing. The parks website is the main way the public finds parks, events, and reservations, so it serves as the Division’s storefront. The new design, better user experience, and SEO work helped bring a 22% increase in visits and page views. That result shows how a strong online presence can grow an audience, and it is the kind of measurable outcome marketers use to judge success.
Finally, the project connects to business decision-making. The old platform had reached end of life, which created a security and operating risk. Choosing a CMS also lowered long-term costs, since staff can now update content without changing code. These are the same kinds of cost, risk, and value decisions I will face when I build the website and online sales for my BBQ sauce company.
