Andrea Zuvich is a historian with a rapidly rising public profile. She specialises in the 17th Century, has more than 1,500 followers on Twitter and has been commissioned to write a novella on The Duke of Monmouth at the same time as working on her forthcoming novel on the Stuart rulers of England, William and Mary!

Andrea approached me to build her a website which was tasteful, modern yet appropriately themed for her subject and easy for her to update. No problem…

I spent a month designing and coding a bespoke WordPress theme for Andrea to give her site a distinctive brand and make it very easily usable for both her and her fans.

My approach included carefully implementing CSS media queries to ensure the site renders optimally on everything from a mobile phone to a desktop computer.

The Seventeenth Century Lady site features an integrated Twitter feed and “LightBox” effect on images so that they zoom gracefully. It also features rendering of “blockquote” sections so that when Andrea quotes writers, their words automatically appear in an engaging handwritten style on a parchment background.

Post excerpts are shown on the front page with randomized image placement. All of the automatic wording is stylised to fit with a 17th Century theme.

Not only this, but I have also set Ms Zuvich up with Google Analytics, an RSS feed and even a Podcast channel to which she can easily record and upload new episodes!

Andrea has seen her traffic rocket following the launch of her new site. She has received over 15,000 visitors, hundreds of new Twitter followers and dozens of Podcast subscribers.

She is frequently complimented on both the content and the presentation of the site and she’s able to frequently and easily update it with new articles.

Andrea tells me she is extremely happy with this site: it is acting as a hub and making sure she is reaching the maximum number of potential followers as she continues to build her profile – vital for sales today. Furthermore, the site can easily be expanded into an online store, and we will probably see about this in the future!