Five years of custom development, including hand-coded refactors that improved historical Lighthouse scores from 60 to 99 on desktop and 25 to 70 on mobile.
A look at the work
Current AdventureSmith rebuild, completed solo in a full-time developer role, separate from the earlier Duffion engagement. Captured October 24, 2026. View full size ↗Visit website ↗
The challenge
Extend and improve a complex travel website while preserving its established content, integrations, and editorial workflow.
What shipped
I delivered Widgety integrations, custom frontend loaders, major refactors, and new ACF-backed blocks during the Duffion engagement. A later nine-month solo rebuild was completed separately in my full-time AdventureSmith developer role.
Widgety integrations
Custom frontend loaders
Hand-coded performance refactors
Custom blocks and ACF editing handlers
Long-term development on the inherited site
Separate nine-month solo rebuild in an employed role
AdventureSmith website development spans two distinct roles: approximately five years of Duffion work on the inherited site, followed by a solo rebuild as the company’s full-time developer.
Five years of custom development
I inherited AdventureSmith’s established website from Noble Studios and spent approximately five years developing it through Duffion. The engagement went well beyond keeping WordPress running: it included Widgety integrations, custom frontend loaders, substantial code refactors, and new custom blocks with ACF editing controls.
A travel website has to connect detailed trip, ship, destination, and offer information without making every page a separate maintenance problem. My work extended that existing system while preserving the content and publishing workflow the business depended on.
Performance through hand-coded refactoring
During that work, I improved the site’s Lighthouse performance score from 60 to 99 on desktop and from 25 to 70 on mobile through hand-coded refactors. Those are historical before-and-after results from my work on the site, rather than a current benchmark of the latest rebuild.
The frontend loaders and refactoring work addressed how the experience was assembled and delivered. The custom blocks and ACF handlers addressed the other side of the same problem: giving editors structured controls for new content without requiring them to change the implementation.
A separate, nine-month rebuild
I later rebuilt the site solo in nine months as AdventureSmith’s full-time developer. That is a separate chapter from the five-year Duffion engagement. The current screenshot shows that recent rebuild; the long-term integration, performance, and custom-block work described above belongs to the earlier engagement.
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