adamroe. 
Client work: The Horseshoe, Lavendon.
Brand, site and dashboard.
A village pub on the High Street in Lavendon, run by Katie and Alex with Brixton, the pub dog. They needed a site that answers a phone quickly: the hours, the menu, what’s on, and how to book a do. Started on 12 October, live on 16 October 2026.
Client work·WordPress·7 pages·One plugin·Live 16 Oct 2026
Review
In the client’s words
Five stars on Google
Woooo! exciting
We already had someone call up last night to order a takeaway as they were looking at the website!
KatieThe Horseshoe, Lavendon · by message, two days after it went live Their site On their Facebook
What people said to the pub
Website looks amazing guys!!
A comment under The Horseshoe’s post of the site’s film
Wesite is really good x
A comment under the same post
The live site
Their site, as their visitors see it.
Seven pages, quick on a phone, with today’s hours worked out from the visitor’s own clock. It scrolls by itself; point at it to stop.
- 12pages of brand guidelinesOpen them
- 11pages of mockup, desktop and phone
- 7pages on the site
- 3screens in their dashboard
- 18logo files, every size they need
- 1plugin, written for the pub
The brief
A traditional village pub with a lot going on: pizza and small plates, a skittles table, a golf society, birthdays to wakes. The site had to say all of it, quickly, on a phone.
The pages came from them: home, the food with photographs, what’s on with the golf society, private hire with the buffets, about, and how to find them. Every fact on the site is the pub’s own. A price or a time nobody had confirmed was left empty, not guessed.
Who it is for, 1
Deciding where to eat tonight
“Hours, the kitchen’s hours, the menus, can I bring the dog. On a phone, quickly.”
Open now, and until when, at the top of every page
Who it is for, 2
Planning a do
“A christening, a wake, a wedding. They need to see the buffets, know it can be tailored, and get in touch.”
The buffets first, then how to tell them about it
Who it is for, 3
The village
“What’s on this month, and the dates to save.”
Every night this month, and the months ahead
Before and after: Their logo, redrawn.
Their menu, kept.
No screenshot of the old site survives, so these are the two real befores: the three logos the pub sent, and their printed menu.
From the building: Every colour is already
on the building.
The pub already had a look: it is painted on the front. Six colours were taken from the building, and three more mixed from those for panels, quiet words and links.
Open the brand guidelines-
Night #1E2733 The window frames and the fixed letters on the front -
Whitewash #F3EEE4 The render on the front -
Copper #D08245 The bar taps -
Sage #9AA77F The dining room walls -
Slate #474E51 The dining room panelling -
Stone #D6B57F The porch
Oswald on topNoto Serif underneath
- 01The gable’s own typeCondensed capitals and a serif line are painted on the front, so the site uses the same pair: Oswald for headings, Noto Serif for the rest.
- 02Their logo, letter by letterNone of 30 free fonts matched their O, R and S. The letters were redrawn from their file and laid over the original to check.
- 03Their horseshoe, keptRedrawn to within 0.6 of their pixels and made the symbol. It loses detail as it shrinks, so it never fills in at small sizes.
Their dashboard: The menu, the nights, the hours.
In their hands.
One plugin, written for this pub, keeps the things that change every week, and the website shows them. The screens are in the pub’s own colours, so what Katie and Alex edit looks like what their visitors see.
Menus
- Sections and dishes, with a price, a description and marks for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free on request and children’s halves
- A dish switched off when it runs out, and on again
- The same menu prints as A4 table menus
What’s on
- A night once, every week, or the first Friday of every month, and the dates fill themselves in
- Entry, how to book, over 18s, sold out or cancelled
- Every kind of night has its own picture, so the grid is never ragged
Opening hours
- The pub’s hours and the kitchen’s, day by day
- Special hours for one date, Christmas or a private party, then back to normal
- Today’s hours on every page, worked out from the visitor’s own clock
Today
- Open now or when it opens, and the food
- The month ahead and the next seven days’ hours
- The whole menu, with what is switched off
Try it
Sold out of Margherita? One switch, and it is off the menu until it is switched back on.
The dashboard fits a phone from 1440 down to 320 pixels wide, because the person who knows a dish has run out is behind the bar, not at a desk. Switch one off here and watch the menu. This is a copy for trying, not their real menu.
Dashboard · Pizzas
- Margherita£14
- Pepperoni£15
- Hawaiian£15
- Prosciutto e funghi£18
On the website · Pizzas
One plugin: Eight plugins off.
One that does the pub’s jobs.
The host put eight plugins on the site to start with. All eight came off; the one that stays beside the pub’s own is the host’s cache. A site doing all of this with a plugin for each job can easily add up to ten, fifteen, twenty, each with its own updates and its own settings screen.
On the site when it arrived
- Akismet
- All in One SEO
- Coming Soon
- Hello Dolly
- OptinMonster
- Site Kit by Google
- WPForms Lite
- WP Mail SMTP
horseshoe-deskWritten for The Horseshoe by adamroe.
- The menu
- The printed menu
- What’s on
- Nights that repeat
- Opening hours
- Christmas and bank holidays
- The enquiry form
- Keeping spam out
- What Google reads
- Clearing the cache
Theirs to run: Easy to change.
Hard to break.
The editor is set up around the brand, so a quick change on a busy night still looks like the pub, and a pub’s site still gets tried by robots every day.
The colour picker
Only their nine colours. Nothing to drift to.
- Night
- Night 2
- Whitewash
- Pewter
- Copper
- Deep copper
- Sage
- Stone
- Slate
Custom colours, gradients and font sizes are switched off, and every page opens inside its own header and footer, so whoever edits sees the page a visitor sees.
Christmas hours
Add the date and its hours. It shows that day, then goes back to normal by itself.
Tracking or advertising tools. The fonts are on the site itself, so no visitor’s details go to Google.
The enquiry form
Checked on the server, whatever the browser did.
- A hidden field robots fill in
- A three-second minimum
- Five an hour from one visitor
- Too long is refused, never cut short
- Nothing slipped into the headers
What Google reads
{
"@type": "BarOrPub",
"name": "The Horseshoe",
"servesCuisine": [
"Pizza",
"Small plates"
],
…
}Plus the opening hours, the whole menu with every price, and each night on What’s on, all written for search engines, a sitemap of the seven pages, and a share card with the pub’s logo.
Updates
Their changes survive every update to the theme and plugin.
Every field the pub can type into was tried with hostile text, on six pages, three screens and the front page. Nothing broke out. The login name is not published anywhere a robot looks.
Measured, not promised
Quick on a phone.
Readable by everyone.
Google’s Lighthouse on the live site on 17 October 2026, as a mid-range phone on a slow connection, one run per page. Scores move a point or two from run to run.
-
Home
99Speed 100AccessMain picture in 2.1 s
-
Food
99Speed 100AccessMain picture in 1.9 s
-
What’s on
99Speed 100AccessMain picture in 2.0 s
-
Private hire
99Speed 100AccessMain picture in 2.1 s
-
About
99Speed 100AccessMain picture in 1.9 s
-
Find us
100Speed 100AccessMain picture in 1.7 s
Best practices and SEO score 100 on every page. Every photograph has a WebP and an AVIF copy beside it, made on upload: the AVIF set is 15.0 MB against the WebP’s 23.3 MB, with no difference to the eye at double size. Labels on the darker panels went from Copper to Stone when Copper measured 4.24:1, under the 4.5:1 line.
Start to live: Five days,
brief to live.
From the first brief on 12 October to the domain pointing at the new site on 16 October.
- 12 Oct The brand The brief, six type pairings and six logo directions, then 12 pages of guidelines, redrawn the same day around the logo they sent.
- 13 Oct The mockup Six pages and privacy, desktop and phone, and the dashboard. The pub asked for more photographs, so the carousels went in.
- 14 Oct Staging The theme and the plugin on Rocket.net, hidden from search engines, and a security review.
- 15 Oct Speed Pictures made light, accessibility to 100, measured on a phone each time.
- 16 Oct Live The domain pointed at the host, the certificate on, and search engines let in.
Their menu, their nights, their hours.
Changed from behind the bar.
The services: The same work,
for your business.
Three services went into this one. Each has its own page with its price on it, or how it is priced, so this is what it would be for you.
- A logo redrawn or made, and the rules for it
- Colours measured for contrast
- Type, photography and the editor’s rules
- Guidelines as a web page and a PDF
- Every page drawn first, at desktop and phone width
- A block theme built from the same file
- Every word and photograph editable
- Hidden from Google until it is ready
- On Rocket.net, in London
- Updates and backups
- The domain stays in your name
The Horseshoe is in Lavendon, in Milton Keynes. If you are nearby, WordPress developer, Milton Keynes is the same work at the same prices, from someone local.
If you run a restaurant or a pub, restaurant website design goes through the four things this site does for The Horseshoe: the menu, booking, hours and ordering.
Want one
like it?
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- Within 12 hoursA reply
- Within 2 working daysA written scope and a price
- OrThe name of someone who fits better