Building Out Practice Project Websites
When I first started exploring WordPress, I wasn’t thinking about portfolios or strategy. I wanted to know what was involved with building a site from scratch. I’d been collecting domains for years, and it finally felt like time to put some of them to use. To keep it manageable, I gave myself two small projects: a shop for my daughter’s handmade bracelets, The Pretty Pendant, and a writing space I called The Pro Resume.
What made these projects work is that neither one was meant to impress anyone, unlike so much of my professional work. They were low-pressure experiments with an audience of one: me. The Pretty Pendant let me play with product listings and categories to see how WordPress handles a lightweight storefront. The Pro Resume gave me space to test out long-form posts and career-focused resources without worrying about polish.
These projects may look simple, but they let me practice the same skills I use in larger builds: navigation design, content organization, and sustainable structure.
The Pretty Pendant
The Pretty Pendant is a small online shop I built for my daughter’s handmade bracelets. Visitors can browse by category, including clay beads, anklets, color palettes, and food themes. The site includes the essentials: an About page, a Contact form, shop policies, and a working cart. The overall design stays lightweight and easy to navigate.
My goal was to see how WordPress handled product-style organization without the complexity of a full e-commerce backend. Along the way, I practiced:
- Structuring a multi-page site that still feels simple
- Using categories to keep products organized and discoverable
- Balancing variety in content types with a clean, consistent design
I wanted to keep the pressure low while learning what WordPress could do. And the site needed to be something I could manage easily, something my daughter could share with her friends. It still functions more like a soft launch than a full storefront, and that was the goal.
The Pro Resume
The Pro Resume started as a personal writing space where I could experiment without pressure. I wanted to try different content styles, revise freely, and see how ideas took shape on the page. Over time, it grew into a site with career-focused posts and resources. It was never meant to be a downloadable resume hub. Instead, it became a writing lab where I could practice, reflect, and refine my skills.
The site structure includes a blog, a Resources page, a Contact form, and a simple About section. The posts cover resume strategy, interview prep, and bigger themes like career transitions. I kept the layout minimal so the focus stayed on clarity and flow.
Through this project I practiced:
- Creating post templates that could be adapted later for clients or documentation
- Organizing career content while avoiding a flat corporate voice
- Shaping structure and flow while keeping visuals simple
In the end, The Pro Resume turned into a useful sandbox. I still return to it when I need a place to test long-form content or explore an idea before bringing it into client work.
What I Took from Both
Neither project started with a strategy. I built them because I wanted to create something useful and learn in the process, and the low stakes gave me space to experiment.
From these two builds, I learned how to:
- Work across different content types, from product listings to blog posts
- Create repeatable systems that reduce overthinking
- Treat structure and navigation as the foundation of usability
The sites are simple, but the process of making them clarified what matters to me as a builder. They reminded me that practice doesn’t need polish to be valuable, and that small experiments often build the habits I rely on in bigger, higher-stakes work.
