Embedded.
I sit with your team, on calls, on-site if needed.
15 years of experience brought in to help solve problems.
Robin Metcalfe
I build content management platforms that bridge data and design
I help design beautiful CMS websites for operators that speed up data entry, clarify your messaging and lead to real success.
Guiding your visitors over the gap
between knowledge and understanding.
between knowledge and understanding.
Designing data interfaces
As the data behind a website grows more complex, the tools for managing it have to keep up. I design admin interfaces that keep data-intensive sites accurate, well-structured and quick to search.
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Catch mistakes as they happen
Data entry shouldn’t just work well, it should feel satisfying. Validation runs as you type, not after you hit save. Length limits, formats and missing matches flag the instant they happen, so data goes in clean the first time and nobody has to redo it.
In a well-known 2009 test, validating inline, as you fill the form rather than after you submit, cut errors 22% and completion time 42%.
- Name
- Hydraulic pump
- Code
- PMP-2024-0153
- Category
- Pumps & actuators
Related
Edit deep relationships, without losing your place
Real records are tangled: a product links to a supplier, the supplier to its terms. Drill straight down the relationship and change a value three levels deep, with a breadcrumb keeping you oriented the whole way.
A breadcrumb lets you recognise where you are instead of having to hold it in memory.
Injecting deep relationships into content
Write naturally, drop in a field or a product image, and pick how it’s laid out. Everything binds to the live record by path and renders into the designed output. Switch the record and every bound value updates at once.
Change the record and every bound field updates at once, so you always see the current state, never a stale copy.
Find anything, across everything
Search is the feature everyone needs and almost nobody builds well. One box that reaches across every model at once (products, suppliers, invoices, contacts, orders, categories), grouped by type, ranked by relevance, so the thing you want is two keystrokes away, not buried five screens deep.
Grouping results by type gives a stronger “information scent”, so the right one stands out instead of hiding in a flat list.
What are data relationships?
A few things are easy to picture: staff, locations, roles, documents. The relationships between them are what grow, and that’s the part the admin side has to keep straight.
Users with a name and a few details.
Staff with roles and departments, and availability that shifts across different locations.
Posts and pages.
Articles with taxonomies, PDFs generated from press releases, and older content moved into an archive.
Products in a shop.
Products with multi-faceted filters and deep categorisation.
The more the pieces relate to each other, the harder the admin side has to work to keep everything accurate, findable and secure. That’s the part I build.
Hi, I’m Robin Metcalfe. I work with clients and agencies worldwide to deliver CMS platforms and websites built on data relationships.
From a local business to a large multinational, all businesses 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 error-free.
Have you got data relationships to manage?
Get in touch.
Agencies & clients I've worked with
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 Read moreClient 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 Read moreClient E-MusicMaestro
2-year partnership on an aural-test and sight-reading practice site
Two-year on-and-off engagement on an aural-test and sight-reading practice site (ABRSM, Trinity), maintained by a dedicated independent developer. Admin pages, student-statistics dashboards, WorldPay payment integration, order-email pipelines. Still running today.
WordPress Read moreExperiments
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
How we'd work together
Managed delivery.
I work with PMs and designers to clarify brief and UX.
We work in tandem to ensure the end product gets a clean hand-off and stays fully transparent to your team.
Diagnostic call.
To kick things off, a 30 minute call to go over your current stack.
Sounds good? Let's get to it.
Book a call →