Vulcan Institute
A Star Trek fan site that got slightly out of hand. vulcan.institute started in 2025 as a Bluesky placeholder, turned into a Vulcan-themed playground, and ended up as a working demonstration of what I can do with WordPress, custom theming, and a bit of JavaScript - on a domain I genuinely had no business buying.
Approach
Custom WordPress theme called vulcan-interface. LCARS-inspired UI – amber and blue on dark, geometric panels, the right kind of restraint. Elementor Pro and ACF Pro behind the scenes, a Vulcan script font system loaded via @font-face, and a few in-progress pieces that don’t quite fit a normal portfolio brief: an aptitude quiz themed as a Vulcan academy entrance exam, an AI-generated research archive, and a Three.js star catalogue.
Outcome
A site that does the job a portfolio piece is meant to do – shows the work without needing me to talk over the top of it. Anything else it does (logic test, fake academic papers, slow-rotating Vulcan meditation page) is bonus material. The brief was indulgent and the deadline was nil, which is the only reason this kind of thing ever gets finished.