Robin Metcalfe

I help agencies deliver CMS products that really work

15 years experience building UX and admin panels for agency clients. Content management systems - I know them inside out. Specialising in Laravel & WordPress.
Creativity/interactivity

Hi, I’m Robin. I’ve got 15 years experience working with product design agencies, here in the UK and abroad.

I specialise in delivering technical CMS products for agency clients: editorial control, database access, CRMs and more.

I work embedded within agency teams, white-labelled if necessary, or as a named consultant they can bring into pitches. I won’t embarrass you.

I work with agency partners to define deliverables, milestones and completion parameters. I keep the surprises small throughout.

I’m a steady hand at every stage of the project, from initial prototype through to long-term partnership.

Want to see your CMS project take flight?

Agencies struggle with…

3 Terrifying Tales

Too Many Plugins

The plugin list is outdated and three pages long. You’re not even sure what half of them do. Admin-bar warnings that seem to get more urgent every day.

Admin Your Team Avoids

They approached the login page with a familiar dread. What would go wrong this time? An update that crashes the site, a half-hour draft, lost in a moment?

Inputs With No Structure

You’ve been scrolling through text inputs and dropdowns for three hours now. When do they end? What do they change? There seems neither rhyme nor reason to this…

How I fix this
1
I audit every plugin: what it does, why it’s there and whether it’s even needed.
I start by identifying what your team actually edits, day to day. The true user stories.
I start by thinking about the content: what exists and how it relates - links between data are important.
2
We’ll whittle the list down to a small, trusted core of foundational plugins.
We’ll design the back-end around just that: only what they need control over, with suitable defaults and guardrails.
We’ll design a reusable data model, with validation in place to ensure information remains consistent.
3
I’ll ensure plugin updates are automated and security-hardened, with strong backups in place.
I’ll help you thoroughly test the system with the people who use it, and offer long-term support.
New page designs will be dynamically constructed from parts designed to fit together without sacrificing the design.

Too Many Plugins

The plugin list is outdated and three pages long. You’re not even sure what half of them do. Admin-bar warnings that seem to get more urgent every day.

  1. 1I audit every plugin: what it does, why it’s there and whether it’s even needed.
  2. 2We’ll whittle the list down to a small, trusted core of foundational plugins.
  3. 3I’ll ensure plugin updates are automated and security-hardened, with strong backups in place.

Admin Your Team Avoids

They approached the login page with a familiar dread. What would go wrong this time? An update that crashes the site, a half-hour draft, lost in a moment?

  1. 1I start by identifying what your team actually edits, day to day. The true user stories.
  2. 2We’ll design the back-end around just that: only what they need control over, with suitable defaults and guardrails.
  3. 3I’ll help you thoroughly test the system with the people who use it, and offer long-term support.

Inputs With No Structure

You’ve been scrolling through text inputs and dropdowns for three hours now. When do they end? What do they change? There seems neither rhyme nor reason to this…

  1. 1I start by thinking about the content: what exists and how it relates - links between data are important.
  2. 2We’ll design a reusable data model, with validation in place to ensure information remains consistent.
  3. 3New page designs will be dynamically constructed from parts designed to fit together without sacrificing the design.

Case Studies

Recent agency and client work

Agency Studio Simpatico

Pulling Salesforce data into WordPress listings

I helped the agency Studio Simpatico build a two-way pipeline between a complex Salesforce events catalogue and a WordPress front-end for a performing-arts foundation.

WordPress

Client Journalism non-profit

I managed WordPress infrastructure and development

During my WordPress partnership with a journalism non-profit, I modernised their block setup and aligned the publishing flow with how their editorial team works.

WordPress

Agency Edinburgh design agency

Embedded freelance developer, two days a week

Two and a half years as the embedded freelance developer for a small Edinburgh design agency working across branding, packaging and print, on their client sites and their own.

WordPress
View all case studies →

I build on Laravel & WordPress

I've worked with these framework powerhouses for years. They always deliver when required, and can be tailored for a wide range of use cases.

How I work with each →

Experiments

Side projects with real purpose

What If Mars Had Oceans?

A real-data Mars water-level visualiser. Drag the slider, the planet actually floods the way the elevation data says it would.

Agency skills Interactives data visualisation animation

AI-Native CMS

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.

Agency skills CMS architecture AI integration prototype-to-production

Bettermojis

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.

Agency skills UI app design vanilla-JS performance
View all experiments →
Hire me

Let's talk.

Inherited stack, complex integration, project that wants a senior hand? Tell me what you're working on.

Replies from [email protected]. Pricing on request.