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Lots of Locks · Client website · live
Tressie’s work is the first thing you see.
Elyakim rebuilt Lots of Locks to honor his grandmother, Tressie, and give her work a durable new home.
A personal legacy
This started with family, not a redesign exercise.
Elyakim’s reason for the rebuild was personal: keep his grandmother’s work visible, use what she actually made, and give the story a working public home again.
The project is presented here as his account of why he took it on—not as a claim of independent reporting or client endorsement.
The original digital home
The web history was recoverable. It was not continuous.
- 1999–2000
The professional story came first.
An archived About page records Tressie’s Sisterlocks training on April 12, 1999, and certification in July 2000. These are professional milestones—not a business founding date.
- 2008
Lots of Locks had an original digital home.
The predecessor homepage says “Last Updated June 3, 2008,” and a verified Internet Archive capture preserves it on September 17, 2008.
- 2012
A recovered homepage recorded another moment.
The saved predecessor file says “Last Updated January 23, 2012.” That proves the page existed at that moment, not uninterrupted operation.
- Oct. 3, 2026
The archive became a public experience again.
The current Lots of Locks project was first deployed at its new domain using the surviving materials.
- Oct. 21, 2026
The responsive design release was verified.
Version 10 confirms a working desktop-and-mobile release, not traffic, ranking, lead, or revenue improvement.
- Oct. 24, 2026
The technical indexing signals were corrected.
Version 11 now serves index/follow HTML, an apex canonical, a real robots file, and a valid XML sitemap. The design stayed the same.
The source material
Two saved homepages show what survived.
These are evidence from earlier versions of the site—not current contact information, availability, or service claims. The visible phone numbers and historical guarantee language belong to the archived pages and are not repeated as present-day promises.
“Patience, Faith, & Vision”
Tressie’s framing in the archived About page
What was at risk
The old address was gone. The source material was not.
The former domain no longer carries the business website. But the original voice, photographs, Sisters artwork, Q&A, service journey, and client history survived across archives and backups.
The design problem was to turn those real pieces into a responsive public site—without flattening them into a generic salon template or presenting old material as new.
The preservation decisions
Keep the legacy. Change what makes it usable.
- 01
Use the real archive
Original photographs, recovered copy, and the identified Sisters artwork anchor the rebuild. Nothing needed a synthetic person or a replacement logo.
- 02
Keep Tressie central
Her portrait, voice, Sisterlocks story, and Patience, Faith, & Vision point of view lead instead of disappearing behind a generic salon template.
- 03
Preserve, not imitate
Cream, blue, gold, expressive type, and hand-drawn details honor the earlier visual language without turning the site into a pixel-for-pixel copy.
- 04
Mark history honestly
Historical testimonials keep archival context. The new experience avoids outdated guarantees and unsupported claims about current pricing, availability, or certification.
The working experience
The archive now works at desktop and mobile sizes.
The public website keeps Tressie visually central while joining the story, three-visit journey, service information, questions, and live contact actions.
What the evidence proves
A legacy preserved in working form.
The story, photographs, artwork, service structure, and next action are visible together in a live, responsive public website.
Technical indexability verified October 24
The site can be crawled. Growth is still unmeasured.
The live response now provides the technical foundation:
- index/follow HTML with no blocking X-Robots-Tag;
- an apex canonical URL;
- a real text/plain robots file;
- a valid XML sitemap.
Those checks do not prove Google inclusion, rankings, traffic, conversions, leads, or revenue. A dated measurement baseline remains future work.
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