Sometimes teams work with broken admin panels. Legacy code or overloaded servers lead to a slow, sluggish experience. Frustrating!
I fix this.
I work with content-rich organisations — editorial teams, membership bodies, regulated businesses — to create streamlined, intuitive content management systems for their data and workflows.
They often already have a structure in place, but need a powerful tool to manage it.
Often clients arrive with an existing platform that isn’t working, or a buggy install that keeps throwing errors. They can’t trust their data. Their team has quietly given up on it, working around the system instead.
I find a path to recovery that’s cost-effective and works for the people involved.
Once the work is done — or when a new client just needs a reliable pair of hands — I arrange an ongoing maintenance retainer: anywhere from a few to a dozen-odd hours a month.
Monitoring performance, proactively remedying issues, and being on hand for technical questions or to help the team manage the system.
When data is scattered across systems and old admin screens, people stop trusting it and start working around it.
Bad data quietly costs most companies 15 to 25% of their revenue, lost to correcting errors, chasing the right figure and cleaning up afterwards (MIT Sloan Management Review)↗.
Older WordPress websites often come with significant admin overhead thanks to 20+ years of legacy code.
But it can be refined and polished to become a real powerhouse. There’s a reason it still powers 40% of the web (W3Techs)↗.
Laravel is a more modern approach that creates completely bespoke solutions. Streamlined interfaces that let your team enjoy logging in.
I combine…
…for companies with a story to tell, to deliver a platform experience that can pivot quickly and meet demand from both operators and visitors.
Hi, I’m Robin Metcalfe. I work with clients and agencies in the UK and internationally to deliver CMS platforms and websites built on clear, accessible data.
From a local business to a large multinational, most find themselves needing to keep their data consistent and accessible to the right people at the right time.
I work primarily with Laravel and WordPress to integrate beautiful designs with relational databases via efficient and intuitive forms and front-end templates.
By understanding a client’s data requirements on a fundamental level, I can build the tools they truly need, intuitive and reliable.
I model how your data actually connects - products to suppliers, staff to locations, articles to authors - so the system mirrors how your business works, not a flattened version of it.
I make the editing tools your team uses every day obvious to use, so updating the site is a five-minute job for them, not a ticket to me.
Clean, server-rendered structure, so search engines and AI assistants can read and surface your content, not just see a pretty shell.
Real data, real stories
Pulling Salesforce data into WordPress listings
Events data sat in Salesforce, the public listings in WordPress, with a gap between them. I worked with NYC agency Studio Simpatico on their performing-arts foundation client, connecting the Salesforce API to their WordPress listings so events data stays fresh and accurate.
WordPress Read more
WordPress editorial flows
Their editorial flow was slowing the team, and the block setup needed modernising. I worked with this journalism non-profit on both, so writers could build compelling article designs more easily. Admin friction was down, reader engagement went up.
WordPress Read more
2-year Laravel support partnership
I helped support and develop features for E-MusicMaestro, an aural-test and sight-reading practice site, maintained by a dedicated independent developer. I gained deep understanding of the relational data powering the site.
Laravel Read moreSide projects with real purpose
Driven by curiosity, I built a real-time visualiser to see what Mars would look like with oceans
Six Verticals, One Engine
A single CMS that produces six wildly different finished sites (allotment, charity, council, museum, scout group, theatre) by tuning an LLM per vertical.
Every Glyph, No Faff
A no-faff browser for ~7,000 emoji, HTML entities and named Unicode symbols. Search in 15 languages, click to copy. Pure client-side.
I sit with your team, on calls, on-site if needed.
15 years of experience brought in to help solve problems.
I work with PMs and designers to clarify brief and interface.
We work in tandem to ensure the end product gets a clean hand-off and stays fully transparent to your team.
I help content-rich organisations understand their data and fix broken admin. Tell me what specific problems you're having and I'll be happy to talk solutions with you.
Replies from [email protected].
Tell me what specific problems you’re having and I’ll be happy to talk solutions with you.
A focused 60-minute session to map what’s slowing your team down. You’ll leave with a clear plan of what to fix and what it would take.
Most of what I get hired for is CMS work. But I've always enjoyed exploring the more creative side of the web. Interactive animations, generative artworks, curious little apps.
The web doesn't have to be purely functional.
I love cubes. I don't know why. Something about the simplicity of unit-sided cubes sliding in and out of view - there's a precision to that which I find genuinely satisfying.
The experiments page has more in this vein if you want a longer look at the things I get up to when nobody's paying me.