CityRoamer
A Riga IT consultancy running on a website-builder template that had quietly broken — an invalid certificate for its own domain, a sixty-family font request, copy that read as machine-templated. I rebuilt it from scratch: a clean, fast, hand-coded site that finally matches the seniority of the business behind it.
// the brief
The brief
The old site was a single-page builder template, and it was failing the basics: the SSL certificate didn't even cover the domain, it pulled a ~60-family web-font request on load, and the copy read as non-native — every classic "shell-site" tell. For a consultancy that's been senior since 2016, it undersold them. The bar: professional over flashy, credible on a cold read, and genuinely theirs — portable code, no builder lock-in.
// the build
What I built
A complete, hand-coded site to replace the template, top to bottom:
- Twelve content pages plus a branded 404 — home, services and four service-detail pages, about, contact, and four legal pages.
- A "Trusted Classic" design system — navy ink, indigo actions, lavender accents, on white — calm and credible, tuned so "trust = calm."
- The client's real logo, pulled from their old site and wired in properly — the skyline mark at header size where the full wordmark would be illegible — plus a regenerated favicon set and a designed share card.
- A live PHP contact form — authenticated SMTP, honeypot, header-injection guard, fails closed if anything's misconfigured — with a branded auto-reply.
- SEO from the static HTML — per-page title/meta/canonical/Open Graph, and Organization + LocalBusiness + Service + Breadcrumb JSON-LD.
- Self-hosted fonts — the Google Fonts CDN removed entirely, so it's GDPR-clean and calls no third parties — a cookie banner, and reduced-motion-safe reveals.
- Pure hand-coded HTML/CSS/vanilla JS — no framework, no build step, no builder.
// the brand
The brand, done properly
An approved "Trusted Classic" direction, built out into a full design system: navy #242445 ink, indigo #525493 for every action, lavender accents, and a Roboto / Roboto Condensed / Roboto Mono type system — with real logo integration and a proper favicon and share-card set. The identity and the site are the same system.
// the handoff
A handoff, not a two-line email
It didn't ship as a bare zip. The delivery came with a guided walkthrough — what was built, the one value to verify on their host, and the exact steps to point the domain and take it live — so handover was a path someone could actually follow, not a shrug and a folder.
// outcome
The outcome
Delivered as a single, clean web-root drop — every asset in place at the right path, the form live and failing closed, ready for the client to point the domain at. Far more professional than what it replaces, and built to last.
“The new site looks and feels far more professional than the old one — clean design, nice touches throughout, and everything just works. Took care of it end to end and the quality shows. Very happy with it.”