People Love Perch: Philip Gwynne
We love to hear how much people love Perch. This interview is with Philip Gwynne, a freelance graphic designer and front-end web developer.
Tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m Philip Gwynne, and I’m a freelance graphic designer and front-end web developer based in Stockton-on-Tees, in the North East of England. You can view my site at philipgwynne.com.
I help organisations of all sizes achieve better results through eye-catching, effective and engaging design solutions across brand, print and web.
What sites have you used Perch for recently?:
My latest Perch project was actually for my own site – philipgwynne.com. I’d been meaning to integrate Perch for some time, and finally did so to coincide with the roll-out of my new personal branding and site.
The only Perch app I’m using on the site is Perch Blog, as that’s the only additional function I needed. I’m using a master page template to add new work to the site, and I’ve integrated Blocks to nearly every page (including my blog) to give me a huge amount of flexibility with page layouts.
Morris Music is the freelance business of Peter Morris, a professional musician and music teacher from County Durham, England. The site features information for potential customers as well as tuition materials for Peter’s students and the general public to use. I used Perch Forms for the contact and service enquiry form, along with the YouTube custom field type for Peter’s tuition videos. I also implemented multi-item regions for all audio files, transcriptions and videos in the resources section.
Careline Lifestyles is a leading independent social care service provider in the North East of England. The site is one of the bigger projects that I’ve implemented with Perch, and uses Perch Blog, Forms and Events apps. The care home pages all use the same Perch Form for enquiries, which takes its content from the care home whose page the form gets submitted from and sends the enquiry directly to that care home’s email address.
The ‘Our Homes’ section takes its content dynamically from the care home pages, including the location select field for the filter – so as and when they add a home from a new location, it’s automatically added to the filter list. Lastly, the site features a career section where I’ve implemented a multi-item region for the posts. The search and filter at the top of the careers page takes its content directly from the job vacancies posted, and the careers section has been made editable by the Company’s HR team only, using the Roles function in Perch.
Why did you choose Perch?
I saw Rachel give a talk at Industry Conf which led me to check out Perch. It was just what I wanted from a CMS and it’s now completely replaced WordPress for me. I now don’t take on any more WordPress jobs as a result and I always advise clients to give Perch a try – so far all of them have, and all of them love it!
How do you find working with Perch?
It’s now part of my business and workflow. It’s extremely flexible and quick to implement (I even integrated Perch into a fairly comprehensive site in a day!). The major benefit for me is that it doesn’t interfere with my code. It’s also perfect for any size website – the option to easily update to Runway if a project grows from a small website to a large one is great value for money, and doesn’t require a large amount of work either.
I love the fact that Perch comes with only what you need, allowing you to pick and choose any extra functionality as required. It’s super streamlined and easy to work with.
As Chris Coyier said, “The right CMS is a customised CMS” and that’s exactly what Perch is – a CMS that’s customised to each individual project, and not the other way around.
How do your clients and content editors find using Perch to update their sites?
They love Perch! I’ve had nothing but great feedback – especially from those who were using WordPress – they have found it a breath of fresh air. It’s so easy to update content with, that I’ve found myself either not having to give training, or simply giving the client a quick 10 minute walkthrough and they’ve got it.
To quote Peter Morris of Morris Music: “I can’t believe how simple it is to update the site, it’s an absolute joy to use!”
What tools do you use alongside Perch to develop your sites?
I’ve used Sass, JS, Bootstrap, Foundation and Skeleton with Perch, and use Brackets as my go-to code editor.