From a founder-built first site to a branded, editable WordPress build
The founder's first site, built on Base44, had stopped opening by mid-July. The new one had to read as an authority, capture every inquiry in a CRM, and let him publish without a developer.
This is critique of the old site, not the person: he built it without a design team.
Home
Eight navigation items, many competing actions.
The new homepage uses a client-journey roadmap and two actions.
Before Drag the white bar After
Contact
The form only opened the visitor's email client, so nothing was stored.
A step-by-step survey now feeds the CRM. Teammates built the connection.
Before Drag the white bar After
The mark had to survive a favicon, not just a presentation slide.
Two directions, designed from scratch.
Two one-page guides that feed the whole site.
Color & typography
Two brand colors and one single-weight typeface.
Contrast, calculated from the tokens. Contrast is calculated from the tokens. Failures became rules, such as gray 400 for decoration only and warning yellow only behind black text.
Five decisions, then a MoSCoW pass.
Several "must haves" were cut: the map became a globe, partner logos became a call to action, and the AI assistant and client login stayed out of scope.
The homepage, blog, and enquiry survey, on desktop and mobile.
Blog: filters, keyword search, and article template
Enquiry survey
Claude Code wrote most of the code. I wrote the requirements, made the design calls, and tested in the browser and in WordPress.
One of my calls: the nav and footer had drifted into three versions each, so I chose one for all eight pages.
September 21
The installed theme showed only a header and footer. An audit showed the code was complete: no page template was assigned and the meta boxes were empty. Claude Code wrote two scripts to fill them from the prototype's copy. I kept it off my WordPress account and worked only with files I uploaded.
Testing the live site against the prototype caught the rest, such as a carousel that never advanced and a language switcher wired up only once.
What I owned
The brand, design system, prototype, and WordPress theme, plus a back-end walkthrough so the team can publish articles.
What teammates owned
Requirements, the CRM connection, domain, test cases, and Chinese translation. The founder wrote most of the copy.
In progress
Pre-launch testing, site animations, and a domain decision. I'll add SEO results after a one-month test.
Content was the bottleneck for over a month, so I built the homepage from the company summary and fixed the structure while the words changed. The hard part was the last stretch: knowing why WordPress showed an empty page, and testing the live site instead of trusting the prototype.
