In the summer of 2023, when I was sixteen, I spent a chunk of the holidays building two WordPress sites. One was my own space, samuelkorenberg.com; the other was a professional site for my mum’s therapy practice in London, capucinekorenberg.com, built together with her.
My site
Building my own site (where you’re probably reading this) was mostly about having somewhere to put projects and interests I’ve picked up over the years. I went for a clean, fairly minimal WordPress design, and it doubled as practice for the bigger job: helping my mum with hers.
Therapy site
The site for my mum, capucinekorenberg.com, was a different kind of project — more collaborative, and built around what she actually needed rather than what I wanted to build. We talked through the structure and content together, set up professional email accounts on the domain, and aimed for something that read as professional and welcoming without being cold.
For the design, we drew on Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” — not a random choice, since my mum knows Japanese art well from her work at the British Museum. We worked it into the WordPress theme carefully, so it felt personal to her without looking out of place for a therapy site.
We also built in PayPal-based booking and payments, but launched with them switched off — the site went live and started getting visibility first, and we turned bookings on once my mum had finished her training and was ready to actually take clients through it.
Once bookings were on, it worked — her schedule filled up steadily, which was genuinely satisfying to watch happen. The site also picked up a few unexpected messages from people who knew her through her Hokusai and Japanese art work at the British Museum, using the contact form to get in touch about that instead.
Running both projects at once that summer was a lot, but it taught me more than either one would have alone — requirements, design, actually building the thing in WordPress, and the decision-making around a phased rollout. It also gave me a better sense of how different a site needs to be depending on who it’s actually for.