Case Study · Photography & Publishing

Presenting Kyoto photography through a multilingual website and custom CMS

Remember Kyoto presents weddings, proposals, portraits and travel photography to clients from around the world. In 2021, we developed a visual, multilingual website and the custom publishing system behind it—connecting galleries, services, articles, testimonials, promotions and qualified enquiries in one product.

Client: Remember Kyoto
Sector: Professional photography
Our role: Website & custom CMS development
Year: 2021

3languages, one consistent experience
Galleryeasy portfolio and image management
CMSsimple tools for managing the entire website
SEOsearch-ready pages with editable metadata

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Browse the multilingual homepage, photography galleries, articles and enquiry experience.

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We can show how the team manages multilingual content, images, services, promotions and enquiries.

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The brief behind the experience

The photographs needed room to lead, but the website also had a commercial job: explain the available experiences, establish trust and turn inspiration into a useful conversation. Because the audience includes visitors to Japan as well as local clients, English, Spanish and Japanese could not be treated as an afterthought.

We shaped the public experience and administration system together. A visitor moves naturally from imagery to context and contact; the photographer can keep every visible part current without editing templates.

Why a custom CMS instead of WordPress

Remember Kyoto needed a focused publishing workflow, not a general-purpose plugin ecosystem. We built the CMS around the team's actual tasks: update three-language pages, arrange gallery images, publish articles, manage testimonials and promotions, and respond to enquiries. That makes the administration area straightforward for everyday use because its labels, fields and actions match the website directly.

The result is lightweight and easy to manage, with no unnecessary themes or plugin dependencies competing with the core experience. It also gives us direct control over performance, routing and maintenance while keeping future changes predictable.

Purpose-built and user friendly

The team sees only the tools and fields needed to run this photography website.

Lightweight by design

A focused codebase avoids generic CMS overhead and reduces third-party dependency maintenance.

SEO managed with the content

Editors control language-specific titles, descriptions, keywords, slugs and social-sharing imagery.

On-site SEO built into the front end

Clean URLs, canonical links, Open Graph tags, semantic structure and XML sitemap support are part of the templates.

One visual story, three languages

Each homepage uses the same design and content structure while drawing from language-specific copy, navigation and routes. The result stays recognizably Remember Kyoto in every market.

English homepage — Remember Kyoto — **English homepage**The primary journey introduces the photographer, services, recent work and selected stories.

Spanish homepage — Remember Kyoto — **Spanish homepage**Spanish visitors receive the same visual narrative with locally managed copy and navigation.

Japanese homepage — Remember Kyoto — **Japanese homepage**The Japanese experience completes a three-language presentation for local and international clients.

From portfolio to enquiry

The public pages balance emotion with useful structure. Galleries help visitors recognize the kind of session they want, articles demonstrate knowledge and personality, and the contact form gathers enough context to make the first reply meaningful.

Photography organized by experience — Remember Kyoto — **Photography organized by experience**Couples, proposals, weddings, portraits and other collections help visitors begin with the work most relevant to them.

An immersive proposal gallery — Remember Kyoto — **An immersive proposal gallery**Individual galleries use a focused image grid to let one type of Kyoto experience tell its own story.

Articles built for discovery — Remember Kyoto — **Articles built for discovery**Search, categories and tags turn field knowledge and recent work into an explorable editorial archive.

A complete editorial template — Remember Kyoto — **A complete editorial template**Long-form advice combines a strong visual lead with related posts and structured article navigation.

An enquiry with useful context — Remember Kyoto — **An enquiry with useful context**Service, location, budget, referral and project details arrive together so the conversation can start productively.

The parts that were worth getting right

Images stay central

Collection and detail templates give each photographic story space without losing navigation or context.

Language-aware routes

Pages, galleries and articles keep translated slugs and metadata aligned with their content.

Better first conversations

Service, location, budget and referral details reach the team with the visitor's message.

Controlled promotions

Validity dates and usage limits keep referral and promotional codes intentional.

The back office, organized by module

The custom CMS mirrors the way the site is operated. Related list and editing screens are kept together below, from visual publishing through enquiry handling and configuration.

Access and overview

The administrative dashboard provides a clear entry point, while managed staff accounts keep editorial access controlled.

The publishing dashboard — Remember Kyoto — **The publishing dashboard**Core content and configuration modules are available from one focused workspace.

Managed administrator access — Remember Kyoto — **Managed administrator access**The team can maintain the accounts responsible for editing and operating the site.

Galleries, services and hero imagery

The visual catalogue is managed as structured collections, supported by service definitions and selectable homepage imagery.

Gallery collection management — Remember Kyoto — **Gallery collection management**Collections can be ordered, published and prepared for each supported language.

Images within a gallery — Remember Kyoto — **Images within a gallery**Individual photographs can be uploaded and sequenced inside their selected collection.

Photography service definitions — Remember Kyoto — **Photography service definitions**Services, locations and price guidance feed the public enquiry experience.

Homepage visual direction — Remember Kyoto — **Homepage visual direction**Hero slides can be managed without changing templates or front-end code.

Trust and promotions

Testimonials support the personal nature of the service, while controlled promotion codes connect campaigns to genuine enquiries.

Client testimonial library — Remember Kyoto — **Client testimonial library**Published client experiences can be ordered and reused across the site.

Multilingual testimonial editing — Remember Kyoto — **Multilingual testimonial editing**One record keeps the client story and its translated presentation together.

Promotion code management — Remember Kyoto — **Promotion code management**Codes remain visible with their validity and usage controls.

A promotion with clear limits — Remember Kyoto — **A promotion with clear limits**Validity dates, usage caps and campaign details prevent open-ended discounts.

Pages and editorial content

Public pages and articles share a multilingual publishing model while retaining the fields each content type needs.

Website page management — Remember Kyoto — **Website page management**Core pages, navigation labels and publishing status are maintained centrally.

A complete multilingual page — Remember Kyoto — **A complete multilingual page**Content, metadata, imagery, routing and language variants stay in one editing flow.

The article catalogue — Remember Kyoto — **The article catalogue**Posts can be searched, ordered and managed with their publication state.

Structured article publishing — Remember Kyoto — **Structured article publishing**Translated copy, images, categories, tags, metadata and slugs are edited together.

Enquiries and site configuration

The final operational layer connects customer requests with delivery settings and the wider site configuration.

Incoming contact requests — Remember Kyoto — **Incoming contact requests**Enquiries are retained as an operational record rather than disappearing into an inbox.

The complete enquiry context — Remember Kyoto — **The complete enquiry context**Contact, service, budget, location, referral and message details remain together.

Contact and email configuration — Remember Kyoto — **Contact and email configuration**Addresses, sender details and customer-facing messages can be maintained by the team.

Site-wide settings — Remember Kyoto — **Site-wide settings**Shared identity, language and presentation settings are managed without code changes.

The content visible in these screenshots belongs to the case-study environment and is shown only to demonstrate the interface.

Engineering decisions worth explaining

Keep translations in one content model

Language variants share records, media and publishing state while retaining their own copy, slugs and metadata.

Treat galleries as structured content

Collections and their ordered images are separate, making portfolios reusable and simpler to maintain.

Build editorial discovery into the CMS

Categories, tags, search and dynamic article routes are managed alongside the post rather than added manually.

Carry enquiry context through

Validation, promo rules, stored requests and automated emails preserve the information needed for a useful response.

Built with

Platform

PHP
CodeIgniter
MySQL
Apache
Lightweight custom CMS

Front end

Server-rendered templates
Bootstrap
jQuery
Revolution Slider
Responsive image galleries
On-site SEO

Publishing & communication

Three-language content
SEO metadata
Dynamic slugs
Gallery ordering
Blog categories & tags
Promo codes
Mailgun email delivery

Need a website where the work and the operation fit together?

We can create the public experience and the practical publishing tools your team needs to keep it alive.

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