Web Proposal · BORN-2026-WEB-D2257

A website worthy of a hidden gem.

A production website for Casa Radiant — built on an edge-deployed Astro and Payload stack, designed to carry four hundred years of Rabat into a fast, image-led, multilingual booking journey.

Notabilis gemma fulget — a precious gem known as radiant. Rabat's motto, and the brief.

Prepared for
Casa Radiant Guesthouse, Rabat
Prepared by
Calvin Briffa · Born Digital Studio
Date
26 May 2026
Validity
30 days from issue
Reference
BORN-2026-WEB-D2257

Translating Rabat's quiet prestige into a booking engine.

You already have the brand direction. The AI-generated mockup proves the look — warm, editorial, image-led, navy and burgundy. What is missing is the system underneath: a CMS your team can actually run, a booking integration that converts, and an architecture built for the languages your guests arrive in.

Casa Radiant is a 400-year-old restored townhouse on Triq San Pawl, a few minutes from Mdina's gate and the catacombs of St Paul. The product is exceptional. The current web mockup is a competent visual reference — but it is a flat static page. Every room edit, every image swap, every seasonal price update would require a code deploy. There is no booking engine, no multilingual structure, no SEO architecture, and no image pipeline for the rooftop sunset shots and stone interiors that sell the property.

Our proposal is to take that visual direction and build the production website around it. The stack is Astro JS for the front end and Payload CMS for the admin — the same considered, edge-deployed pattern we run for image-led, content-rich Maltese brands. The site loads in under a second on mobile, the front-of-house team edits rooms and galleries without touching code, and Eptera drops in as the booking widget with deep-linked CTAs per room.

The architecture is multilingual from day one. English is published at launch; German, Italian and French slots are wired in for staged rollout when copy is ready. Schema markup, sitemap, and Open Graph metadata are correct on every page so the heritage-search funnel — "rabat malta accommodation", "mdina boutique hotel", "guesthouse near catacombs" — finds you.

The commercial frame is a one-time setup commitment of €2,250 excl. VAT at signature, plus a managed care retainer of €295 / month billed quarterly from launch. Eight to ten weeks from signature to go-live, presented in four phases.

What the current mockup doesn't yet do.

The visual direction is right. The problems are structural — they are the things that turn a brand page into a business website.

⚙️

No CMS

Every room edit, image swap, or price-display change is a code deploy. Front-of-house cannot publish a seasonal page or update the gallery without engineering involvement.

🔑

No booking engine

The site has no path from "I want this room" to "I have a booking reference." Eptera needs to live inside the journey, not at the end of an email exchange.

🌍

No multilingual structure

Malta's hospitality funnel draws German, Italian, French and English visitors. A flat page in English alone leaves a real share of the addressable market off the table.

🔍

No SEO architecture

Heritage hospitality is a search-driven category. Without schema, sitemap, and per-page metadata, the property does not surface for "rabat malta accommodation" or "mdina boutique hotel".

🖼️

No image pipeline

Rooftop sunsets and stone interiors are heavy. Without responsive sizes, WebP / AVIF, and lazy loading, the site that sells the property is also the site that loses the booking on mobile.

📝

No content workflow

The operators cannot update availability blurbs, seasonal copy, or the gallery on their own. The website should run with the business, not against it.

A considered stack, deployed at the edge.

Astro for the front end, Payload for the admin, Cloudflare for delivery. The same pattern we ship for image-led brands that need to load fast everywhere and stay easy to run from inside the business.

Astro JS
Front End

Static-first site generator that ships near-zero JavaScript by default. Pages load in under a second on mobile — which is where the booking decision is made.

Payload CMS
Admin · Self-hosted

TypeScript-native headless CMS. A photographer-friendly admin where Casa Radiant's team edits rooms, swaps hero shots, manages galleries, and publishes seasonal pages.

Cloudflare Pages
Edge Delivery

Edge-cached globally so the site is fast from Frankfurt, Milan, London, Valletta — wherever the booking journey starts. SSL, DDoS, and WAF in front of every request.

Cloudflare R2
Media Library

Object storage for room shots, terrace shots, the Rabat gallery. Image pipeline handles responsive sizes, WebP / AVIF, and lazy loading without manual work.

Eptera
Booking Engine

Wired in as the booking widget, with deep-linked "Book this room" CTAs from each room detail page. The architecture is headless, so the engine can be swapped later without rebuilding the site.

Multilingual Architecture
EN · DE · IT · FR

Locale routing (/de, /it, /fr), translatable fields on every collection, a language switcher in the nav, and hreflang tags so Google serves the right language to the right guest. EN at launch; the other three slots ready for staged rollout when copy is signed off.

What we build, in detail.

A full marketing site, a working CMS, the integrations that make the business run, and the technical instrumentation that puts Casa Radiant on the right search results.

Pages

Front of house
01

Home

Hero, story intro, experience grid, room previews, location and CTA, gallery teaser.

02

About / Our Story

The 400-year history of the house, the restoration, the people behind it.

03

Rooms — index

Cards for Standard, Superior, Rooftop Suite, Jacuzzi Suite — with clear pricing cues and CTA.

04

Room detail pages

One page per room type. Image carousel, amenities, max guests, "Book this room" deep link to Eptera.

05

Experience Rabat

Catacombs, Grotto Tavern, Pjazza tas-Sieqja, the bakeries, transport links — the heritage content that earns the SEO.

06

Gallery

Full lightbox gallery, categorised: rooms, terrace, Rabat. Lazy-loaded and image-pipeline optimised.

07

Info

Check-in, house rules, FAQs, breakfast, adults-only positioning. Editable from Payload.

08

Contact

Form forwarding to info@casaradiant.mt, embedded Google Map, phone and email.

CMS modules

Payload admin
  • Rooms collection — name, type, beds, amenities, photos, description, max guests, base rate display
  • Pages collection — flexible block builder (hero, text, image grid, gallery, CTA)
  • Experiences / Local guides collection for heritage content
  • Gallery / Media library with categorisation and alt-text fields
  • Site settings — contact, social, opening rules, breakfast hours
  • Multilingual field structure: EN at launch, DE / IT / FR slots ready
  • Role-based access for front-of-house vs admin
  • Preview before publish on every collection

Integrations & technical

Infrastructure
  • Eptera booking engine widget wired across the site
  • Deep-linked "Book Now" CTAs per room into Eptera
  • Contact form (JotForm or Formspree) → info@casaradiant.mt
  • Google Maps embed for Triq San Pawl
  • Google Analytics 4 + Search Console
  • Schema.org markup: LodgingBusiness, HotelRoom per room, LocalBusiness
  • robots.txt and sitemap.xml
  • Open Graph and Twitter card metadata per page
  • Cloudflare Pages deployment with custom domain (casaradiant.mt)
  • Cloudflare SSL, DDoS protection and WAF
  • Edge caching tuned for image-heavy delivery
  • Image pipeline: responsive sizes, WebP / AVIF, lazy loading

Excluded from this scope — call out, plan separately

  • Eptera subscription itself — paid by Casa Radiant directly to the provider.
  • Professional photography — we recommend a half-day shoot, available as a separate add-on.
  • Translation copy for DE / IT / FR — the architecture is built; translation is a separate engagement once English copy is signed off.
  • Email hosting and domain registration — handled separately by your operator or via Veracloud (Microsoft 365).
  • Ongoing content writing beyond the two hours / month included in managed care.

Eight to ten weeks, four phases.

From signature to go-live. The phases overlap where it is safe to overlap and stay deliberate where the work needs care — image work, copy sign-off, booking integration.

01
Weeks 1–2 · Discovery & Design

Brand calibration and design system

Workshop on tone, audience, and the editorial voice of the property. Translate the AI mockup into a tightened design system — typography scale, palette, image-treatment rules, component library. Sign off design before we touch code.

Deliverable: design system + key page comps
02
Weeks 3–5 · Build & CMS

Astro front end, Payload admin

Build the Astro site and the Payload CMS in parallel. Stand up the multilingual field structure. Wire the image pipeline. Deploy to a staging URL on Cloudflare Pages from week three so the team can see and feel progress weekly.

Deliverable: staging site, working CMS, training session
03
Weeks 6–8 · Content & Integration

Eptera, SEO, content load

Integrate the Eptera booking widget and deep-link per room. Load English content into the CMS — rooms, gallery, experience pages, info, story. Schema, sitemap, OG metadata, Analytics and Search Console. Front-of-house training on Payload.

Deliverable: content-complete EN site on staging
04
Weeks 9–10 · Launch & Handover

Go-live and care begins

Performance pass, accessibility pass, cross-browser, mobile, slow-network. Cut over the custom domain. Submit to Search Console. Hand over admin credentials and the runbook. Care retainer begins from launch.

Deliverable: live casaradiant.mt, handover pack, care active

Two clean numbers, no hourly columns.

A one-time build, and a monthly retainer that keeps the site fast, secure, and easy for the operators to run. All figures excl. VAT.

1 Setup

Setup Commitment

Design, CMS, launch
€2,250

Excl. VAT. One-time fee, paid at signature.

  • Discovery, design system, and key page comps
  • Astro front end across all in-scope pages
  • Payload CMS with all collections and multilingual structure
  • Eptera booking integration and deep-linked CTAs
  • SEO architecture, schema, sitemap, OG metadata
  • Image pipeline and Cloudflare R2 media library
  • Cloudflare Pages deployment, custom domain, SSL
  • Front-of-house training and handover pack

A practice built for this kind of website.

Born Digital is a Maltese studio that has been building image-led, content-rich websites since 2008. We know the local tourism funnel, we know the stack we are recommending, and we run the kind of long-term care relationship Casa Radiant will need after launch.

18+

Years from Malta

Building digital for Maltese and international brands since 2008.

500+

Websites delivered

Hospitality, heritage, public sector, finance, retail, professional services.

WoPHoP

Government of Malta

We are the team behind the WordPress platform recommended by the Government of Malta.

Edge

Astro + Payload practice

Standard stack for our marketing and informational website work. Same pattern, deliberate calibration per client.

Group capability, when you need more than a website

Casa Radiant's primary engagement is with Born Digital. When the brief broadens — image work at scale, multilingual draft translation, business systems, ISO-grade information security — the wider group is in the same room.

Neural AI

neuralai.mt

AI-augmented delivery. Image tagging, alt-text generation at scale, multilingual draft translation for DE / IT / FR.

Veracloud

veracloud.com.mt

Microsoft Solutions Partner, ISO 27001. Any future Microsoft 365 or business-systems work sits cleanly inside the group.

Born Digital Studio

born.mt

Strategy, design, build, training and managed operations for content-led brands. The studio holding this engagement.

The frame of the engagement.

Payment

  • One-time setup commitment paid at signature: €2,250 excl. VAT
  • Managed care: €295 / month excl. VAT, billed quarterly from launch
  • 12-month minimum on the managed care retainer
  • VAT charged at the prevailing Maltese rate
  • Payment by bank transfer to Webee Ltd

Delivery

  • Eight to ten weeks from signature to go-live
  • Four phases, weekly check-ins, staging URL from week three
  • Two rounds of revisions included on the design phase
  • Content load assumes English copy ready by week six
  • Go-live subject to client sign-off and content readiness

Ownership & IP

  • Casa Radiant owns all content, brand assets and CMS data
  • Born Digital owns the underlying code framework and templates
  • Custom code written for Casa Radiant is licensed for indefinite use on the site
  • Source available on handover if the engagement ends
  • Domain registered in Casa Radiant's name from day one

Validity

  • This proposal is valid for 30 days from date of issue
  • Pricing assumes scope as defined in this document
  • Material scope changes are quoted separately before any work begins
  • Reference: BORN-2026-WEB-D2257
  • Governing law: Malta

Ready when you are.

Reply on this proposal, or call directly. We can move into Discovery the week after signature, with the staging URL live by week three.

Reply to Calvin +356 9949 5850
Prepared by
Calvin Briffa
Title
Managing Director
Studio
Born Digital Studio
Entity
Webee Ltd · Malta