Steamboat: Full Steam Ahead
Destination development website built in WordPress with a custom theme, sticky scroll navigation, animated content transitions, and photo updates triggered as users move through the page, showcasing hospitality, transportation, and community projects in Steamboat Springs.
About the Client
Full Steam Ahead is a microsite for Steamboat Resort’s major base area redevelopment and on-mountain improvement project. The project represents a large-scale transformation of the guest experience, including new amenities, improved resort navigation, expanded terrain, and updates that support Steamboat’s long-term future while honoring its western heritage
The Challenge
Full Steam Ahead needed a website that could communicate the scale, progress, and excitement of Steamboat’s transformation in a way that felt immersive and easy to explore. The site needed to guide visitors through different project phases, updates, and improvements while creating a highly visual experience that matched the energy of the resort.
Key objectives included:
- Creating an immersive microsite that showcased Steamboat Resort’s Full Steam Ahead transformation
- Using scroll-based animations to make the page feel dynamic and engaging
- Building a sticky navigation system that highlighted sections as users moved through the page
- Updating photography and visual content on screen as users scrolled through the experience
- Organizing project phases, resort updates, and improvement details in a clear, easy-to-follow structure
- Ensuring the experience worked smoothly across desktop and mobile devices
My Approach
I built a custom WordPress theme for the Full Steam Ahead microsite, using a traditional WordPress theme structure. The site was developed to support a highly animated, scroll-driven experience with custom front-end behavior, sticky navigation, and visual transitions that helped bring the resort improvements to life.
My work included:
- Building a fully custom WordPress theme
- Developing a sticky navigation system that tracks and highlights the active section while users scroll
- Creating scroll-based animations throughout the page to support a more immersive storytelling experience
- Implementing photo updates and visual transitions that change as users move through the content
- Structuring content around project phases, resort improvements, and key updates
- Creating custom page sections tailored to the microsite’s unique design and storytelling needs
- Optimizing the animated experience for performance and usability across devices