Te Fare Tauhiti Nui:
Polynesian identity
online.
Full redesign of the cultural portal of the House of Culture of French Polynesia. Seasonal visual identity, a multilingual site, a digital content-management ecosystem — to serve 280,000 Polynesians and bring a living culture to life online.
↗ matarii.pf
A living culture,
with no platform of its own.
The Matari'i calendar — the Pleiades — is the fundamental landmark of Polynesian culture. It sets the rhythm of the seasons, of farming, fishing, celebrations. But in 2025, no digital portal was dedicated to it. Te Fare Tauhiti Nui, the House of Culture, wanted to build one — from a blank page.
The need
A portal dedicated to preserving and spreading the cultural knowledge tied to Matari'i. Credible like an institution, alive like the celebrations it represents. Multilingual (reo Tahiti, French, English).
The challenge
Build everything from scratch: visual identity, brand guidelines, logo, site, content management, hosting. Work with the cultural referents and the Ministry of Culture to validate every step. And deliver in time for the 2026 celebrations.
The stakes
That the site reflects the spirit of Polynesian culture — not a generic WordPress theme with coconut trees. That Polynesians recognise themselves in it, that institutions respect it, that the general public finds its place.
Three builds,
one coherent deliverable.
The identity, the site and the management ecosystem were thought through together from the start. Not three projects subcontracted to three vendors — a single thread, a single team, a delivery that holds together.
An identity created
from a blank page.
- Matari'i logo in Voltaire Frangela typeface
- Brand guidelines with the Ni'a / Raro seasonal duality
- Cultural symbolism: frigatebird & fish motifs
- Web, print and social media variations
- Validation by the cultural referents and the Ministry
A site that changes
with the seasons.
- Institutional site in reo Tahiti, French, English
- Automatic switch between the Ni'a season (November) and Raro (May)
- Real-time events calendar
- Media library with photos, videos, educational documents
- Members & community area
Sustainable
management autonomy.
- Custom WordPress with ACF for structured content
- Self-hosted Coolify hosting
- Daily local backups + Backblaze B2
- Auto-recovery proxy (99.98% uptime)
- Training and documentation for the TFTN team
Two seasons,
two visual worlds.
The central concept of the identity: the site automatically flips from one palette to the other following the Polynesian calendar. Not a logo change — a change of rhythm, of colours, of imagery. A duality that structures the entire brand.
Ni'a — vitality.
Vitality, generosity, ocean–land connection, the energy of life springing up. Cool, luminous tones: ocean, tropical vegetation, night sky, bioluminescence.
- Depth · layers, turquoise glows
- Freshness · generous spacing
- Organic movement · curves
Raro — introspection.
Rootedness, memory, inner fire, ancestral wisdom. Warm, deep tones: earth, fire, raw materials, dusk. This is the season currently driving the site.
- Warmth · orange/red gradients
- Telluric depth · raw materials
- Ancestral radiance · Voltaire Frangela serif
Four key pages,
a site that breathes.
The most-visited pages: the events calendar, the media library gathering photos, videos and educational documents, the press area, and of course — the mobile rendering, because 70% of Polynesians visit from their phone.
WordPress + Coolify,
self-hosted in French Polynesia.
No foreign SaaS that shuts down next year. Everything runs on a dedicated server, with daily local backups + Backblaze B2, auto-recovery monitoring, and Telegram alerts on incidents. The theme source code is delivered to TFTN.
WordPress + ACF
A proven CMS for editorial management. ACF structured fields for the calendar and media.
Theme matarii
Built from scratch: Ni'a/Raro dual season, multilingual, CSS animations, accessibility.
Coolify + Hostinger
Self-hosted VPS, Docker deployment, vertical scaling possible. Sovereign data.
MariaDB
MySQL's sibling database, stable and performant. Backed up every night.
Traefik + Let's Encrypt
Reverse proxy with auto-renewed TLS. Smart routing per subdomain.
Backblaze B2
Off-site DB + uploads backups, 30-day retention, automated monthly restore test.
Watchdog cron
Proxy auto-recovery on outage (<90s). Telegram alerts via n8n.
Uptime 90d
Measured since go-live. Outages under 90 seconds included in the calculation.
Beyond the numbers,
a platform that holds.
An institutional site isn't measured in conversion rate — it's measured in presence, accessibility, reliability. Here is what we delivered six months after go-live.
From a blank page
to go-live.
Six months of work, step by step, in continuous validation with the client. Each milestone was presented, adjusted, validated before moving on.
We soak it in
Meetings with the cultural referents, reading, field observation. We understand Matari'i before drawing it.
We design
Logo, seasonal palette, typefaces, cultural motifs. Ministry + referent validation before writing a single line of code.
We code
Tailor-made WordPress theme, multilingual, seasonal switch. Media library, calendar, members area. Tested on every device.
We support
Production rollout, TFTN team training, documentation, 24/7 monitoring, continuous support.
Our site finally reflects who we are. Visitors understand the moment they arrive that we're talking about a living culture, not a museum.
↳ Management · Te Fare Tauhiti NuiLet's build
your digital identity.
You have a cultural or institutional project with high identity stakes? We can do for you what we did for TFTN. First meeting free, fixed quote.