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SAIF Centennial Website

SAIF 100 Web Site App Adaptation was a short-term public web project created to extend SAIF's centennial celebration beyond an in-person installation. The original experience centered on the 100 Faces of Change exhibit, which highlighted 100 Oregon policyholders and business owners and was featured at the Portland Art Museum with a touch screen application. I was asked to help adapt that experience for the web so company leadership could share it publicly for a limited time. The final solution translated the exhibit into a simple, accessible WordPress-based experience that allowed visitors to browse a visual grid of stories, open them in a modal interface, and return easily to the larger collection.

Problem

SAIF leadership wanted a public-facing web version of an interactive centennial exhibit, but the project had to move through corporate security concerns and infrastructure limitations. The web experience itself was conceptually straightforward: present 100 stories in a browsable grid with an easy way to open and read each one. The real challenge was determining how to deliver that experience in a way that satisfied both the business goal and the security team's concerns about exposing a WordPress installation inside a corporate environment.

Constraints

The site was only intended to be live for a short period, so the solution needed to be practical, fast to deploy, and easy to manage without overengineering the infrastructure. At the same time, internal security stakeholders did not want to expose a corporate server to the attack surface that comes with WordPress. The project also needed to preserve the spirit of the exhibit's touch screen interface in a web-friendly format while keeping the experience intuitive for public users.

Approach

I recommended building the experience in WordPress because it offered a simple and efficient way to structure each featured business story as a post, making the collection easy to import, manage, and display as a unified archive. The homepage was designed as a post grid so users could browse thumbnail images visually, click into an individual story through a modal interface, read the content, and then return directly to the grid. Although users could also move through entries like a lightbox gallery, the primary experience was designed around exploring the broader collection and returning easily to that overview. The more important part of the project was not the front-end mechanics themselves, but the infrastructure decision behind them. To address corporate security concerns, I proposed hosting the site on a completely separate Bluehost environment with a basic WordPress installation and a standard theme, then pointing a subdomain to that temporary application for the duration of the campaign. That approach gave leadership the public-facing experience they wanted without introducing unnecessary risk to internal systems.

What I Built

• Helped adapt SAIF's centennial exhibit experience into a short-term public web application.
• Recommended a WordPress-based solution so the 100 featured business stories could be managed efficiently as individual posts.
• Structured the homepage as a visual story grid that mirrored the browse-first behavior of the original interactive experience.
• Implemented a modal-based reading flow so visitors could open a story, read it, and return easily to the main grid.
• Supported gallery-style navigation between stories while keeping the grid as the primary interaction model.
• Selected a practical temporary hosting approach using Bluehost rather than placing the application on internal corporate infrastructure.
• Used a basic WordPress installation with a standard theme to keep the solution simple, fast, and easy to maintain for a short campaign lifecycle.
• Solved a corporate security concern by separating the public-facing WordPress install from the organization's primary environment.
• Coordinated a subdomain-based publishing approach so the site could still appear as part of SAIF's broader web presence.
• Delivered a simple but effective solution that succeeded because of practical troubleshooting and stakeholder-aware implementation decisions.

Outcome

The project successfully brought the exhibit to the public web in a way that matched leadership's goals while respecting legitimate security concerns. By separating the temporary WordPress application from internal infrastructure, the team was able to launch the public experience confidently and use it for the limited campaign period as intended. Leadership was pleased with the outcome, and the project stands out as a strong example of solving an organizational and infrastructure problem with a practical, low-friction implementation rather than a technically elaborate one.

Why It Matters

This project matters because it shows that effective web work is not always about building the most complex system. Sometimes the highest-value contribution is recognizing the real obstacle, aligning stakeholders, and designing an implementation path that is simple, safe, and fit for purpose. In this case, the technical build was intentionally straightforward, but the success of the project depended on strategic thinking, understanding security concerns in a corporate environment, and choosing an architecture that allowed the experience to exist publicly without creating unnecessary risk.