Project Overview: Re-engineering a Real Estate Leader
O'Brien Real Estate is one of Victoria's fastest-growing real estate networks, with over 43 offices and more than 16,000 properties under management. In 2024, they launched a major "It's Personal" campaign to center their brand on a people-first, community-focused philosophy.
I first worked with them in 2020-2021 on their existing custom WordPress site. Due to the success of that partnership, I was brought back in 2024 to help architect and execute the frontend transition for their new rebrand.
My role was to lead the frontend optimization, clean up years of legacy code, and ensure the new digital experience was as fast, reliable, and high-quality as their new brand identity.
The Challenge: Technical Debt vs. A Modern Brand
The O'Brien site was powerful but complex, built on a custom WordPress theme with many features and plugins. Over time, it had accumulated significant technical debt.
The core challenges were:
- Page Speed: The site's performance was being held back by legacy code, unoptimized assets, and outdated layout techniques, leading to slow page load times.
- Maintainability: The existing CSS and JavaScript were difficult to maintain, making new updates slow and risky.
- The Rebrand: The new "It's Personal" branding required a pixel-perfect, modern UI that the old, rigid CSS structure simply couldn't support without breaking.
The goal was to deliver a complete visual and performance overhaul without disrupting the core backend functionality and complex WordPress integrations.
My Solution: A Phased Approach to Modernization
Instead of a full, high-risk rebuild, I architected a phased approach to migrate the frontend to a modern, performant stack.
1. Architecting a Modern Build Process I introduced a modern frontend tooling workflow using Webpack. This allowed us to bundle, minify, and optimize all JavaScript and SCSS assets. I also enforced a linter to ensure code quality and consistency across the entire project, making future maintenance far easier.
2. Migrating from Legacy Code I meticulously audited the existing frontend, identifying and untangling years of legacy CSS and JavaScript.
- SCSS Refactor: I refactored the stylesheets, moving from a flat structure to a scalable, component-based SCSS architecture. This fixed dozens of legacy layout issues and made the new brand styles easy to apply globally.
- JavaScript Cleanup: I migrated old, conflicting scripts into modern, modular JavaScript (ES6+). While we still used jQuery for some essential plugins, all new logic was written in clean, performant vanilla JS, drastically reducing conflicts and page-blocking scripts.
3. Performance & Stability The new, optimized build process meant the site's assets were a fraction of their original size. By cleaning up the layout logic, we also eliminated rendering bugs and improved the site's stability, particularly on mobile devices.
The Outcome: A High-Performance Platform
This project was a successful, multi-phase collaboration that resulted in a faster, more stable, and future-proof platform.
For O'Brien Real Estate (The Client):
- A Successful Rebrand: Their new "It's Personal" brand is now reflected in a polished, fast, and professional digital experience.
- Measurable Performance: The optimization work was a key factor in the platform's growth, which saw a 40% increase in website speed and a complete fix of layout issues.
- Faster Maintenance: The new, clean codebase allows their team to roll out new features and marketing updates in a fraction of the time.
For Me (The Developer):
- Trust and Partnership: Being brought back for the 2024-2025 rebrand was a testament to the trust we built in the first phase.
- Technical Impact: This project was a valuable case study in "digital renovation"—proving that a legacy site can be modernized to achieve top-tier performance without starting from scratch. I successfully balanced the new (Webpack, ES6) with the old (WordPress, jQuery) to deliver the best possible outcome for the client.