Ciğerim Restoran

Context

Ciğerim Restoran has been cooking in Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus, since 2010. It is known for Albanian-style and Edirne-style liver and liver shish, alongside Mersin tantuni, döner and kebabs. It has two branches, in Karakum and Karaoğlanoğlu, both open until 1 am.

I first built the restaurant's site on a ready-made theme in 2025, then rewrote it from scratch in September 2026. The starting point: most visitors come on a phone, often late at night, and want one thing from the site. To order, to check the menu, or to find their way to a branch.

Approach

• Ordering happens on WhatsApp, not on the site. The visitor chooses a branch, sees a preview of the message, and one tap opens that branch's WhatsApp with the message filled in. There is no cart or checkout; the channel the restaurant already uses stays as it is.
• Two branches, kept apart. Each branch has its own card with WhatsApp, menu, directions and phone, so details never blur between the two.
• Late hours are the difference. The "open until 1 am" label is on the first screen. On mobile, the hours, the food and the order panel come before the headline.
• Only what is true. There is no verified rating, award or customer count, so the site claims none.
• Design. Sections separated by hairlines, drawn from a white-tiled service counter; the red from the logo is used only as an accent.

Highlights

• Dated campaigns: The restaurant's campaign posters carry end dates and drop off the site by themselves when they expire.
• Signature dishes: 9 dishes with photos.
• Film: A 4.8-second muted loop loads only as it nears the screen; the 13.7 MB full film loads only on click.
• Gallery: 33 photos with filters and a lightbox.
• Menu: Per-branch links into the separate QR menu app.

Technical foundation

• Core: PHP 8 pages with no framework, jQuery or Bootstrap, and no build step. Branches, dishes and campaigns are read from a single data file.
• Languages: Two languages under /tr/ and /en/, 156 translation keys each, with canonical and hreflang on every page.
• Structured data: Restaurant JSON-LD with both branch addresses, the menu link and social profiles.
• Performance: The homepage HTML is 9 KB compressed. One CSS file (10.5 KB) and one deferred JavaScript file (5.7 KB); a self-hosted font; WebP images with JPEG fallbacks and explicit dimensions. The first campaign poster loads with high priority.
• Accessibility: A skip link, a mobile menu that keeps keyboard focus inside it, and support for reduced motion.
• Deployment: An FTP deploy script that reads credentials from environment variables and backs up each server file before replacing it.

Outcome

The new site has been live since September 2026. A visitor on a phone can choose a branch and send an order message on WhatsApp, and reach the menu and directions from the same place.