In the world of historic preservation, Bob Yapp is a legend. As the former host of PBS’s About Your House and the force behind the Belvedere School, Bob doesn’t just “flip” houses—he saves them. He teaches a new generation how to respect original materials and avoid the “cheap and modern” shortcuts that rob a home of its soul.
Ironically, when I first encountered Bob’s website, it was suffering from the exact same issues he fights against in the real world: it was built with “lesser materials,” it was failing structurally, and it was painfully slow.
The Emergency Call
The project didn’t start as a redesign; it started as a rescue mission. Bob was locked out of his own site. His previous developer was unreachable, the site was down, and Bob didn’t even have editor privileges.
Thanks to a referral from a mutual friend, I stepped in to perform some “digital archaeology.” I gained access to the server, went directly into the database to reset the administrator credentials, and finally got Bob back into the driver’s seat.
From 14 Seconds to Milliseconds
Once the “roof stopped leaking” and the site was back online, we looked at the performance. The old site was sluggish, taking a staggering 14 seconds to load. In the modern web, that’s an eternity.
By migrating the site to Pressable Hosting, right-sizing every image, and implementing modern best practices, we achieved a total transformation.
| Metric | Before | After |
| Load Time | 14,000 ms | 628 ms |
| Accessibility | Hidden in menus | Clear Header CTAs |
| Backend | Slow & Unresponsive | Snappy & Intuitive |
Design Inspired by the Cornice
Bob is a man who appreciates the details. When we met at his office in Hannibal, MO, I realized the site needed to feel like The Belvedere Inn—the historic bed and breakfast where Bob lives and teaches.
I took photos of the Inn’s architectural details, specifically the cornice (the decorative molding at the top of the exterior walls). I then hand-crafted a digital graphic based on that specific piece of craftsmanship to use as a design element for the site.
We leaned into the parchment tones and textures Bob loved from his original background, but gave them a crisp, professional polish that reflects his status as a master craftsman.
The “Hand-Tooled” Functionality
The heart of Bob’s business is his hands-on workshops. While many developers would have reached for a bulky, expensive “Calendar Plugin,” I took a more artisanal approach.
Following Bob’s own philosophy of using the right tool for the job, I built a custom solution:
- Custom Fields: We added specific data points to WooCommerce products so course dates are easy to manage.
- Drag-and-Drop: We implemented a reordering system so Bob can manually arrange his courses by date.
- Smart Filtering: Students can now easily filter out “past” or “out of stock” courses, making the registration process seamless.
A Site Worthy of the Work
The new BobYapp.com is no longer just a digital brochure; it’s a high-performance engine that matches the quality of Bob’s teaching. We didn’t just “fix” a website—we restored it using the same principles of integrity and craftsmanship that Bob applies to every historic home he touches.
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