Hi, I'm

Richard Pastenes

I'm a Senior Front-End Developer (AKA I build web apps).

How an awesome web developer looks like :)

About Me

And the tech I use

Hi, my name is Richard Pastenes. I've been obsessed with figuring out how things work from a young age. From tinkering with my toys to getting in trouble for taking apart (and putting back together) pretty much every electronic in my childhood home, I was driven to pursue the analytical, yet creative, field of Front-End Software Developer.

During my years in college, while getting my BA in Electronic Engineering, I discovered that besides an analytical side I also have a creative one, furthermore, I felt the need to explore it! So I started with photography and reading books about graphic design. With time I realized the perfect way to combine my creative side with my love for technology was to create web apps!

I'm currently part of the Velir team, where I'm building and improving modern web apps for high-profile clients.

A few technologies I'm familiar with:

  • ACF
  • Alpine.js
  • CSS
  • ES6
  • Framer Motion
  • Gatsby
  • Gitflow
  • GraphQL
  • JavaScript
  • MySQL
  • Netlify
  • Next.js
  • Node.js
  • PHP
  • REST API
  • React
  • SASS
  • Sanity.io
  • TailwindCSS
  • Timber
  • TypeScript
  • WPGraphQL
  • Web Components
  • WordPres

Work

Some thigs I've built

Screenshot of Richard Pastenes Photography

Photography Portfolio

I may've mentioned that my favorite hobby is photography, and why not build a photography site like no other, where instead of the overused photo gallery, users can visualize how my art would look on their walls.

I designed this myself using Figma. Developed on Next.js with Sanity as the CMS, and learned and implemented Framer Motion for the animations.

  • React
  • TailwindCSS
  • Sanity
  • Next.js
  • Vercel
  • Framer Motion
  • Figma
Headless wordpress & gatsby podcast site

Headless WordPress Podcast Site

This podcast site started as a Gatsby + Netlify CMS single-page project but the client's CMS requirements called for a familiar yet robust CMS back-end. The obvious solution was to re-use the existing Gatsby front-end, sourcing the data from a WordPress instance, using ACF Flexible Content to manage blocks, and hosting it in Gatsby Cloud to leverage the impressive almost-instant Gatsby previews.

  • WordPress
  • React
  • Gatsby
  • ACF
  • WPGraphQL

Headless E-commerce Site

E-commerce platform to sell Colombian coffee roasted in the PNW, using the recently introduced Hydrogen framework from Shopify, a React-based framework built specifically for Shopify headless solutions, with a bold yet fun design.

  • React
  • Hydrogen
  • E-Commerce
  • TailwindCSS
  • Shopify
Screenshot of a modern headless sanity gatsby site

Portfolio Site

Every other year or so I try to re-do this site applying the knowledge that I've acquired since the last iteration. This is the definition of a modern site, as it uses Sanity, an API first CMS, Gatsby for the front end and it's hosted on Netlify.

  • Sanity
  • Gatsby
  • React
  • Netlify
  • TailwindCSS
  • Three.js
Screenshot of a site using a modern WordPress tech stack

Modern WordPress Stack

I was part of the team of developers that worked on this (still unreleased) WordPress site, which uses Timber to replace PHP with the power and versatility Twig, Tailwind for styling, and Alpine.js for interactions rather than the now-dated jQuery.

  • WordPress
  • ACF
  • TailwindCSS
  • Alpine.js
  • Timber
Built by Richard Pastenes