Terra i Foc: Catalan artisanal ceramics, now online

From LinuxBCN.com we have just published the new website of Terra i Foc, the artisanal ceramics workshop founded in 1969 by Joan Martínez Peidro and Isabel Serres in the Penedès region. A history of over fifty years of clay, fire and hands that now has a place to tell itself to the world.

What we built

A bilingual site (Catalan and English) that gathers the memory of the workshop in five main sections:

• Joan — biography and curriculum of the founder
• Family — five generations of ceramicists, from grandfather to grandchildren
• Workshop — daily life: machines, moulds, pastes, glazes, firings, workers, fairs
• Collaborations — artists like Benet Ferrer, Salvador Mañosa, Maties Palau Ferré, Joaquim Casadevall
• Glossary — over 60 ceramic terms defined (a resource for any ceramicist)

There is also a gallery with images of the workshop and pieces, a direct contact form, and a credits page thanking everyone who made the project possible.

How it’s built

At LinuxBCN.com we have a philosophy: modern technology with artisanal simplicity. Terra i Foc is a static site, fast, without heavy dependencies or unnecessary JavaScript.

• Hugo — static site generator. The site is built once and served as flat HTML files. Instant loading, zero database, zero server running.
• GitHub Pages — free hosting with a global CDN. Each git push triggers an automatic build via GitHub Actions and the site goes live in minutes.
• Custom CSS — designed from scratch, no frameworks. Earthy color palette (earth #361712, fire #c81111, ash #8a7a6e) drawn from the craft itself: clay, fire, ash.
• Jost typography — preconnected and preloaded from Google Fonts to minimize loading time.
• Truly bilingual — each page has a Catalan and English version, with hreflang and x-default so Google and search engines serve them correctly.

Privacy first

This website does not use cookies. None. Neither first nor third-party. There is no cookie banner because it’s not needed.

• Cookieless analytics: GoatCounter, a European service that installs no file in the browser, anonymizes IPs and does not allow individual user identification. Dashboard at /admin/ with KPIs, temporal charts, sections, devices and referrers.
• Contact form: data via Formspree directly to the client’s inbox. Not shared with third parties.
• Complete legal pages: legal notice, privacy, cookies and accessibility — all accessible from the site footer.

SEO / GEO / AEO optimization

We worked on three dimensions of modern search:

• SEO — for traditional Google (meta tags, canonical, Open Graph, Twitter Cards)
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) — for AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) — for featured snippets and voice search

With LocalBusiness schema with business data, BreadcrumbList for navigation, and FAQPage in the glossary (real questions: “What is stoneware?”, “What are aventurines?”). A full SEO/GEO/AEO audit was completed before publication.

Accessibility

Designed following WCAG 2.1 AA: “Skip to content” link, keyboard navigation, visible focus with red outline, alternative text on images, coherent heading hierarchy, and respect for prefers-reduced-motion (if you have motion reduction enabled on your system, the site disables animations).

Performance

No framework JavaScript, no heavy fonts, no third-party CDN requests. CSS is minified at build time. The result: exceptional performance score and zero recurring server costs.

CI/CD with GitHub Actions

Deploy (push to main) — push → Hugo build --minify → GitHub Pages Total time: ~90 seconds from push to live website.

Analytics (every hour) — cron → GoatCounter API → process-analytics.py → analytics.json → commit The dashboard reads a static JSON — no authenticated request from the browser.

The footer

At the bottom of the site, discreetly, are the legal links (Legal notice | Privacy | Cookies | Accessibility | Statistics) and our signature: Powered by LinuxBCN.com.

All the code is open: the repository is on GitHub, in case any other workshop or business wants to see how it’s built or adapt it.

For us it was a special project: helping preserve the memory of a Catalan artisanal craft with the technology we love most. If you have a similar project, find us at linuxbcn.com.

→ terraifoc.cat