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Case studySite and dashboardsofiabraccalenti.com

Sofia Braccalenti

First website in 2025, redesign in 2026: an atlas to explore.

Sofia Braccalenti photographs wildlife and nature on her travels, from Umbria to Madagascar, and tells the story in an online diary. In 2025 we built her first website; in 2026 we rebuilt it from scratch, with an interactive atlas, a species index and a dashboard so she can update it herself.

See the before and after↓Visit sofiabraccalenti.com
sofiabraccalenti.com home page on desktop, full pageHome page of the 2025 website on desktop, full page
sofiabraccalenti.com home page on mobile, full page
  • Desktop performance100Old site63Lighthouse, before and after
  • Mobile performance100Old site49top marks, on mobile too
  • Main content on mobile1.2sOld site2,7 sHome page LCP
  • Mobile home page weight781KBOld site1.7 MBfrom 40 to 18 requests
  • 27species in the index, each with its own profile
  • 231countries already on the map, with their regions
  • 2languages with real pages: Italian and English
  • 100accessibility, best practices and SEO on Lighthouse
Client
Sofia Braccalenti, documentary photographer, Perugia (Italy)
Business
Wildlife photography and travel stories
Platform
2025: WordPress, Elementor and plugin maps · 2026: Astro and a custom dashboard
Online since
May 2025, redesign since November 2026

One photographer, two websites.

Sofia has worked with us since 2025. The first website opened her travel diary; the redesign grew out of what new trips, new photos and new species taught us.

  1. May 2025The first website

    Online, with maps of her trips.

    The first goal was to tell Sofia’s trips through her photos: a map to pick a country or region, and for each one a story with pictures of the animals she met.

    • WordPress with Elementor
    • Maps drawn with two different plugins
    • A story for each country or region
    • English through machine translation
    The home page of Sofia Braccalenti’s first website, May 2025
  2. November 2026The redesign

    Rebuilt from scratch, and in Sofia’s hands.

    Same stories, written by Sofia and copied word for word, but with an atlas you explore like a real map, a species index and a dashboard she uses to add countries, regions, photos and animals on her own.

    • Static Astro website, no database
    • An atlas with every country in the world
    • A species index with 27 profiles
    • Custom dashboard with guided steps
    Sofia Braccalenti’s home page after the redesign, November 2026

Hand-drawn maps that couldn’t grow.

  • Maps to draw by hand for every trip
  • Two different map plugins
  • No way to find the animals again
  • English through machine translation
  • Performance 63 on desktop and 49 on mobile
  • Updating it required Elementor

The 2025 website told the trips with two different map plugins: every country and region had to be drawn and linked by hand. Adding a new trip meant redoing the map, and meanwhile the photos kept growing with no way to find the animals again.

Underneath were WordPress and Elementor, and English came from a machine-translation plugin: for Google the diary existed only in Italian. And on a phone the site was heavy.

The 2025 website: the Umbria story, text and photos in one column
The 2025 website: long stories, with text and photos stacked one under the other.

The goalA travel diary with the photos at its heart, a map that grows with every new country, a simple way to find the animals again and a dashboard Sofia can use on her own, even from her phone.

Drag and see the difference.

After: sofiabraccalenti.com home page
Before: home page of the 2025 website
Old siteNew site
Home

Before, a title, a photo and a map of Europe. Now a full-screen bear, the diary in numbers and a world atlas to explore.

Drag the handle or use the arrow keys.

For those who look at the photos and for the one who takes them.

01 · The species index

Every animal she met, with its own number.

Like a Pokédex: every species photographed has a number, a coloured group and a profile with its scientific name, all the photos and the places where Sofia met it. You can filter by group and search by name.

  • 27 numbered species, from No. 001 onwards
  • Filter by group and search by name
  • A profile with scientific name, photos and places

N° 001Iberian lynxLynx pardinus

The species index with filters by group
The species index on a phone
02 · The atlas

A real map, not a drawing.

The atlas starts from the whole world and is explored like a real map: drag, zoom, open a continent, then a country, then a region. Visited places colour themselves, and countries too close together group into a circle you can open.

  • All 231 countries in the world, with their regions
  • Zoom, dragging and marker clustering
  • A new country colours itself as soon as it’s published
The world atlas with the countries visited
The atlas on a phone
03 · The stories

Text and photos that lay themselves out.

Every trip is a story made of blocks: headings, text, photos, galleries and videos. The site lays them out on its own, alternating text and photos, arranging galleries as a mosaic and adding the chapter index and the next trip.

  • Automatic layout of text, photos, galleries and videos
  • A chapter index that follows your reading
  • The species on the page, linked to their profiles
The Spain story with its chapter index
The Spain story on a phone
04 · Sofia’s dashboard

A new trip in a few steps.

Sofia searches for the country by name, picks regions from the official list, writes the story in blocks and uploads photos, even 20 MB files and from her phone. Under each photo she names the species: if it’s new, the dashboard adds it to the index with the next number.

  • Every country in the world, searched by name
  • Photos shrunk in the browser before upload
  • New species added to the index with their number

Countrystory and photoslive

The dashboard: editing the Spain page
The dashboard on a phone
05 · Prints and licensing

Every photo can become a print.

Every full-screen photo has “Buy this photo”: it opens the form with the photo already attached and asks whether a print or a licence is needed. Every image carries its author and copyright, and Google Images can show that it’s licensable.

  • “Buy this photo” on every full-screen image
  • A form with the photo attached and the type of request
  • Author and copyright inside every file, new ones included
The Prints and licensing page
The contact form with information, print or licence

A new trip without calling anyone.

What used to need us is now done by the dashboard. Sofia focuses on the photos; the rest happens on its own.

  • Live in seconds

    Every save republishes the site: nothing to upload by hand.

  • Photos that lighten themselves

    Even 20 MB files: the browser shrinks them before upload, the server creates the web sizes.

  • Copyright in every photo

    Author and rights written inside every file, new uploads included.

  • Automatic translations

    English updates on save; a manual correction stays.

  • Maps that colour themselves

    A published country or region appears on the atlas by itself.

  • Videos converted

    Even up to 2 GB: the server scales them down to 720p and publishes them when ready.

  • Preview and draft

    You see the page before publishing it; a draft stays hidden.

  • Twenty versions back

    Every save keeps the last 20 versions; anything deleted goes to the bin.

2025 e 2026, point by point.

AreaOld siteNew site
PlatformWordPress with Elementor and map pluginsStatic Astro website and custom dashboard
MapsDrawn by hand with two pluginsAn atlas of every country, with zoom and clustering
SpeedPerformance 63 on desktop and 49 on mobile, LCP 2.7 s on mobilePerformance 100 and 100, LCP 0.4 s on desktop and 1.2 s on mobile
WeightMobile home page of 1.7 MB, 40 requestsMobile home page of 781 KB, 18 requests
AnimalsOnly in the story captionsAn index of 27 species with profiles, filters and search
StoriesText and photos in one columnSelf-arranging blocks, chapter index, mosaic
LanguagesMachine translation through a pluginReal pages in Italian and English
UpdatesPages and maps edited in ElementorDashboard with guided steps, live in seconds
PhotosJust a generic contact formPrints and licences, copyright in every image
Data for GoogleOnly generic page dataPerson, stories, places, species and licensed images

Every trip and every species, easy to find.

20251language seen by Google: Italian
20262languages, with real pages in Italian and English

The Italian addresses stayed the same, already known to Google. Around them came the English pages and a profile for every species, and all the old technical WordPress addresses redirect to the right pages.

  1. 01
    Same addresses

    Countries, regions and contact stay where Google knew them.

  2. 02
    Linked languages

    Every Italian page has its English version, linked with hreflang.

  3. 03
    A page per species

    27 profiles with common name, scientific name, photos and places.

  4. 04
    Licensed images

    Author, copyright and licensing page in every photo’s data.

  • 27species profiles
  • 58photos with author and licence
  • 100Lighthouse SEO score
The Iberian lynx profile, with scientific name and places
Every species has a profile with its scientific name, photos and places: one more page Google can show.

At launch, in numbers.

  • 100Desktop performance
  • 100Mobile performance
  • 100Accessibility
  • 100Best practices
  • 100SEO

Lighthouse, November 2026: best values measured on the home page, species index and Umbria story.

Quality checked

  • Accessibility, best practices and SEO at 100 on the pages measured
  • Country and region borders checked automatically
  • Spam-protected form without a captcha, with a confirmation to the visitor
  • Analytics only after consent, with a consent log

For the client

  • Independence: trips, photos, species and videos are published from the dashboard.
  • A diary that grows without redrawing the maps.
  • Photos can become prints and licences, with the rights protected.

What we will measure

The new website has been live since November 2026. Over the coming months we’ll update this case study with the new trips Sofia publishes and requests for prints and licences.

Take this case study with you.

To read at your own pace, share with colleagues or present in a meeting.

For those who want the technical details.

Our roleFirst website in 2025 and redesign in 2026: planning, design, development of the site and the dashboard, atlas, species index, content migration, English, SEO and launch, with the same point of contact from start to finish.

Architecture
Base
Static Astro with Tailwind CSS and TypeScript: the server delivers ready-made pages.
Dashboard
PHP and JavaScript, no database: content is stored as JSON files, with history and a bin.
Maps
Natural Earth data and SVG generated at build time, with no map libraries in the browser.
Speed
Images
WebP in four sizes, 400 KB at most each, the first with high priority.
Maps
The home page holds only the coloured countries; the rest of the world loads as the map comes into view.
Video
720p in WebM and MP4, loaded only when visible.
Data and privacy
Analytics
GA4 through Google Tag Manager with Consent Mode v2: without consent, nothing runs.
Rights
XMP and IPTC metadata with author and copyright in every photo.
Structured data
Person, Article, Country, AdministrativeArea, Taxon and ImageObject with licence.
Languages
Translations
English via DeepL on save, manual corrections protected.
Addresses
English pages with translated addresses, hreflang and x-default.

The 2025 website had hand-drawn maps for every trip. The 2026 one already knows the whole world: Sofia picks the country, and the map, the page and the index update themselves.

The screenshots of the 2025 website were taken before the redesign went live; there is no mobile screenshot of the old site. The dashboard screenshots were taken with test data. Those of the new website are from 8 November 2026; the cookie banner is hidden only in the images. The old website’s figures were measured before the rebuild, the new one’s with Lighthouse in November 2026.

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