02 / KOTOHOSTING · KOTOTEAM
A redesign of a hosting website: a steampunk server room, three feline specialists with real jobs, and a client account built on its own theme and plugin instead of a page builder.
01 / Design challenge
When hosting works, nobody sees it: servers, backups and security live somewhere out of sight. The website had to make that care visible and give the company a face people remember, without turning a technical service into a toy. And it had to leave its page-builder setup, WordPress with Elementor, for something the team fully controls.
The central idea
Your site is up.
The cats are watching
02 / Interface decisions
Archie looks after the servers and launching sites, Nox after security, monitoring and backups, Mia after support. On the homepage every service card says who handles it, so the characters explain the services instead of decorating them.
See who handles whatThe crew has written rules: only these three on the homepage, no decorative cats, the same breed, fur, outfit and equipment in every scene. Each character appears in their own context: Archie next to the servers, Nox by the safe and the monitors, Mia in support, chat and the FAQ.
Find Mia next to the FAQThe fantasy belongs to the team. Reviews belong to people, without cat avatars or steampunk costumes: trust should not look like a costume party.
Read the reviewsThe colours came from the mockups and live on as theme tokens: warm metals on deep navy, with teal kept for status.
#08141F#B88746#A65D37#F3A83B#20B8B003 / A detail you can try
The first homepage concept had cats everywhere: in every service card, in every step, even in place of customers’ faces. The final version keeps three characters, gives each a role and turns the rest into clear icons. Compare the top of both mockups.
04 / Under the hood
The page builder gave way to the site’s own theme and plugin. Clients, services and invoices live in the plugin, so they survive any future redesign. Account pages are described in code rather than stored as editable pages: nobody can rename them or send them to the bin by accident.
The account mockup showed disk gauges like “75% used”. There is no source for such live numbers yet, so the real account shows the plan limits and the remaining paid period instead. The data layer is ready to switch to live figures once a source appears.
Fonts are local, and the pages do not call third-party servers: no extra delay and no visitor addresses handed to anyone else. Ukrainian at the root and English at /en/ work without a translation plugin.
05 / What came together
Since September 2026 the website has been live in Ukrainian and English: a steampunk world with three specialists, plans, and a client account where services, domains, invoices and support requests come together. Hundreds of automated checks look after the account, the pages and the translations.
The design takeaway: a mascot is decoration, a team is a promise. When each character answers for something real, the fantasy starts to build trust.
Visit KotoHostingThe finished site is one part of the story. Small discoveries along the way have a place of their own.