Stone Real Estate: Long-Term Support & Modernization Strategy

Project Overview: A Long-Term Partnership

Stone Real Estate is one of Australia's fastest-growing and most recognizable real estate networks. Their website is a critical, high-traffic asset for their national brand and their many franchise offices.

My engagement with Stone has been a long-term partnership in two distinct phases. First (2019-2021), I provided dedicated frontend support for their mature WordPress site. Later (2025), I was brought back in a strategic role to help architect the frontend for their next-generation rebrand.

Phase 1: Reliable Support & Feature Development (2019-2021)

During this period, I acted as a trusted, remote frontend developer to support their core team. The primary goal was to ensure the website remained stable, performant, and agile enough to keep up with their marketing team's demands.

My key responsibilities included:

• New Feature Development: I built and integrated numerous new features, including custom-built WordPress page templates and new custom post types (CPTs) to handle various marketing campaigns.
• Complex Integrations: A key project was the successful integration of a digital property report system, building the frontend components to connect with the backend and provide a seamless user experience.
• Ongoing Maintenance: I was a consistent resource for troubleshooting and fixing frontend bugs, refactoring legacy SASS, and ensuring cross-browser compatibility.

Throughout this phase, I collaborated remotely with their Senior WordPress Developer. We established an effortless and highly efficient workflow, allowing us to manage a complex, mature codebase and deliver features quickly and reliably.

Phase 2: Architecting the 2025 Rebrand (2025)

The Stone team engaged me again in 2025 to help plan the technical strategy for their next major rebrand. The legacy WordPress theme, while functional, was showing its age and was difficult for new developers to work with.

The challenge was to devise a plan to modernize the frontend stack, dramatically improving performance and the "Developer Experience" (DX) without requiring a full, high-risk backend rebuild.

As a technical planner, I delivered a complete frontend roadmap focused on modernization:

1. Modern Build Process: I proposed and planned the introduction of a Webpack build process, including a linter (like ESLint) and SASS compilation. This would automate optimization, enforce code quality, and make the project more maintainable.
2. Modern CSS Architecture: I architected a move away from legacy CSS to a modern approach using CSS Custom Properties (Variables). This allows for site-wide theme and brand changes (like colors or spacing) to be managed from a single file, making the new rebrand easier to implement and maintain.
3. Performance & DX: The plan outlined a strategy to refactor legacy JavaScript and jQuery into smaller, more efficient modules, drastically speeding up page load times and making the code more enjoyable and productive for the internal team to work on.

The Outcome: Trust Through Value

For Stone (The Client):

• (Phase 1) They had a reliable, "hands-on" developer who could keep their core marketing site stable and agile for over two years.
• (Phase 2) They received a strategic, low-risk, and high-impact technical plan that would increase site performance and significantly lower the long-term cost of maintenance and new features.

For Me (The Developer):

• This long-term partnership demonstrates my ability to build trust and grow with a client, evolving from a support role into a strategic advisor.
• It showcases my versatility—I am just as comfortable maintaining a legacy WordPress/jQuery codebase as I am architecting a modern, high-performance stack with Webpack and modern CSS.