WEBSITE BUILD · OWNER HANDOFF
LePlatt’s Pond
Two WordPress sites for one family ranch, on an agency’s hosting. We merged them into one site that Krii now edits herself — on hosting that costs about half as much.
2 → 1
WordPress sites merged into one, and every old page address from both now forwards to it
$39 → $20
a month for hosting, down from the agency’s fee
98
Lighthouse performance on a phone, with SEO at 100
THE FINISHED SITE
One site for the whole property.
The homepage, recorded on leplattspond.com in October 2026: the ranch in numbers, the hand-drawn map of the wedding weekend, and the questions couples ask first.
THE PROBLEM
One family ranch, split across two websites
LePlatt’s Pond is a lakeside wedding venue on L-J Ranch, a 100-acre working cattle ranch in Colorado’s Pine River Valley, twenty minutes from Durango. Krii and Paul Black run all of it: the weddings, the events, The Loft, and the Hereford herd.
Online, it was two businesses. leplattspond.com sold the venue. lbarjranch.com sold “Weddings & Ranching” — the same weddings, under a second name. Both ran on WordPress, hosted by an agency for $39 a month, and when we looked, the contact forms weren’t working.
At kickoff the goal was plain: one name instead of two, and a site the family could run themselves.
Before · February 2026
leplattspond.com · WordPress 6.9.1
- Coordinating
- Packages & Pricing
- Testimonials
- Tour
- Events
- Articles
- The Loft
- L-J Ranch
- About
- Contact
Before · February 2026
lbarjranch.com · WordPress 6.8.3
- Home
- About Us
- Weddings
- Events
- Beef
- Accommodations
- Contact
Now · one site
leplattspond.com · every old page from both sites forwards here
- Weddings
- Events
- The Loft
- The Ranch
- About
- Contact
THE RECEIPTS
“Weddings & Ranching in Southwest Colorado”
The ranch site’s headline. Weddings were for sale on both sites.
“Designed by Animus Marketing”
The old footer credit. The same agency hosted the sites for $39 a month.
“WordPress 6.9.1 · WordPress 6.8.3”
Two separate WordPress installs, running two different versions.
THE PROCESS
Built with her, not for her
Six working sessions, kickoff to launch, with Krii in every one of them. The site was built in the tools she would keep using, so the handoff happened along the way instead of at the end.
Jan 14
The brief
One live, modern, cohesive website, and a family that can update it themselves. That was the whole scope, and the measure of done.
Jan 30
Kickoff
Krii set up her own v0 account on the first call. The plan was written down the same day: one site, organized around the property, with weddings, events, The Loft, and the ranch each getting a page.
Feb 5
A first look
A working mock-up on the second call. The logo got decided, and the old contact forms turned out to be broken, so inquiries moved to Tally.
Feb 11
Her photos, her map
Real photographs of the property went in, along with the hand-drawn map of the wedding weekend. Hosting moved to Vercel at $20 a month, down from $39, and Krii got a written guide to editing the site in v0.
Feb 19
Inquiries, into a spreadsheet
Three Tally forms (event inquiry, get in touch, and let’s start planning), each feeding a Google Sheet. Then the publish workflow, walked through end to end.
Mar 11
The last pass
A final design review, and the plan for moving both domains over to the new site.
Mar 16
Live
The launch session: GitHub, publishing, and Vercel, together. The Internet Archive’s capture that day already shows the new site. A 10-page post-launch guide followed, ending in a master checklist.
THE BUILD
A site the family runs
Four things carry it: one site built around the property, editing the owner does herself, pages that hold up on a phone, and speed.
One site, built around the property.
Weddings, events, The Loft, and the ranch each have their own page now, under one name. The weddings page does the selling: one price with everything included, the vendor team, real couples in their own words, and the inquiry at the end.
Old links still work. Every page address from both WordPress sites — the venue’s and the ranch’s — forwards to the matching page, so years of Google results and bookmarks still land somewhere real.
“You couldn’t have built the website based on just the information I gave you and it turned out like that. AI couldn’t have done it alone either. But the combination of the three of us working together — it created this awesome product.”
She edits it herself.
The site was built in v0, the tool Krii uses now. She set up her own account at kickoff, learned to make changes by describing them, and publishes them herself through Vercel. She has edited the site on her own since launch.
The trade, stated plainly: editing runs on a $29-a-month v0 subscription, on top of $20 for hosting.
It holds up on a phone.
The homepage, the menu, and The Loft all work at phone width, with the same photographs and the same calm layout as the desktop site.
Performance
Accessibility
Best Practices
SEO
The leplattspond.com homepage on a phone, Lighthouse 12, October 2026. On desktop it scores 100 / 96 / 93 / 100. The weddings page, with its video and galleries, scores 85 for performance on a phone.
Fast, and easy for Google to find.
A sitemap and robots file went in with the build, so search engines can find every page of the new site, and every old address from both WordPress sites forwards them to the right one.
THE SITE, END TO END
Scroll the site, not a picture of it.
The live LePlatt’s Pond homepage, captured top to bottom at desktop and phone widths. You drive the scroll. The notes in the margin follow the page as it moves.
EVERY PAGE
One look, every page
The same calm, photo-first pages carry the weddings, the events, The Loft, and the family’s story — on a desktop and on a phone.
Photography on the site and in this case study: LePlatt’s Pond.
THE RESULT
What changed, line by line
Websites
BeforeTwo WordPress sites under two names, both selling the same weddings.
NowOne site, one name. Every old page address from both sites forwards to it.
Hosting
Before$39 a month to the agency that hosted the old sites.
Now$20 a month on Vercel. Editing in v0 is a separate $29 a month.
Changes
BeforeTwo WordPress installs on someone else’s hosting.
NowKrii makes them herself, in v0, and has since launch.
Inquiries
BeforeContact forms that weren’t working.
NowThree Tally forms, each feeding one Google Sheet.
Two websites became one, and the family runs it now — which was the point from the first call.