Sandra is an academic researcher who needed a personal website to present her work, publications, and CV. She had previously tried WordPress but found it frustrating — plugins breaking, updates causing issues, and a general lack of control for someone non-technical. She needed something simple, maintainable, and fully her own.
Designed and developed independently as a freelance contractor, separate from any studio or agency.
Rather than handing her another off-the-shelf CMS, I built a lightweight custom platform tailored exactly to her workflow. The goal was to give her complete independence — she should be able to update any part of her site without ever touching code or worrying about a system breaking on her.
For the visual direction, Sandra had no formal brand identity, but she shared references and personal photographs that gave a clear sense of her aesthetic. From that, I developed a clean, minimalist design that felt personal and considered without being over-designed.
Built with PHP and Laravel, the site includes a custom admin dashboard where Sandra can create and manage her own content categories — research, selected works, work in progress, teaching, and any others she defines — and publish entries that appear on the front end automatically. She can also upload a new CV as a PDF at any time, instantly replacing the previous version on the site. No plugins, no updates, no dependencies to manage.
Sandra went from struggling with WordPress to having a platform she fully controls on her own terms. The site reflects her personality and academic identity, and she can keep it current without any technical help.
