NereusProgram.org
The Nippon Foundation Nereus Program is a global research partnership of 17 leading institutes advancing the understanding of the human-ocean system across the natural and social sciences — spanning oceanography, marine ecology, fisheries economics, and coastal community impact. I was responsible for the end-to-end development of their public-facing platform, from initial planning through final deployment, building a fully custom, multilingual WordPress theme from the ground up with no page builders or pre-built themes involved.
Project Overview
Custom Theme & Architecture
- Built a bespoke WordPress theme entirely from scratch, including a fully custom landing page.
- Architected multiple custom post types — News, Presentations, Reports, Films, Infographics, and Events — each tailored to the organization's content needs.
- Designed reusable, modular components for single-post templates, supporting PDF, video, and image embeds alongside rich text content, shared consistently across post types.
Content Discovery & Filtering
- Developed a dynamic News listing page with multi-parameter filtering by year, topic, and content type.
- Built a Publications page with a live filter/search system by year, author, or keyword.
- Created a paginated Reports listing for structured access to policy briefs and reports.
- Designed a Newsletter Archive page consolidating all past publications in one place.
Events System
- Implemented custom sorting logic to surface current and upcoming events first, with past events following chronologically.
- Added year-based filtering to help users navigate a large events archive.
Nereus Science Conference Microsite
- Developed a dedicated, feature-rich conference page including a hero section with a custom Three.js animated slide, an event overview and key themes, speaker profiles, a multi-day itinerary component, an integrated registration form, and a partner/sponsor showcase.
Homepage Experience
- Built a custom homepage slider, including a Three.js-powered animated slide for an immersive visual introduction to the program.
Multilingual Support
- Implemented full multilingual capability (English/Japanese), ensuring content, navigation, and templates work seamlessly across languages.
Summary
This project involved solving the full scope of challenges faced by an international research organization: presenting years of academic and policy output in an accessible way, supporting a global multilingual audience, and delivering an engaging conference experience — all through a hand-built WordPress theme with no reliance on off-the-shelf themes or builders.