Professional Web Development

We build primarily on WordPress with a custom hand-coded theme, and on Next.js when a project genuinely needs a headless setup. The choice is made on your requirements, not on our preference. WordPress fits businesses that edit content weekly and want one system to maintain. Headless fits products that need sub-second response at scale and can afford to run two systems. In practice the cheaper option usually wins. In 2026 we measured a hand-coded WordPress theme with no page builder at 0.46 seconds on our own 45 pages, and 0.26 seconds on a recent client build. That is faster than most headless sites assembled without care. What we never do is build on a page builder or a bought template, because the layout then lives inside a plugin you have to keep paying for and cannot fully control.

Yes, completely. Every file, credential and design asset transfers to you at handoff, along with written documentation. There is no ongoing licence, no dependency on our infrastructure and no proprietary builder that stops working if you leave. This matters more than it sounds. A site assembled in a page builder is effectively rented. The layout lives inside a plugin, and cancelling that plugin breaks the pages. We write the theme by hand, so any competent developer can read it and continue without us. For example, in 2026 we shipped a client plugin of 242 lines of JavaScript and 280 lines of PHP with its own admin screen, and the client now edits it directly. In practice you receive a repository, a documented admin and a walkthrough call. The site keeps running whether or not you stay with us.

Schema markup is structured data that tells search engines and AI assistants what each page actually is. We implement JSON-LD for every relevant type: Organization, LocalBusiness, Person, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList and Article. The types are linked into one connected graph rather than scattered as separate snippets, because a graph lets an engine resolve your business as a single entity. Our own site carries 11 linked nodes, and you can inspect them before hiring us. Schema is set up during the build, not sold afterwards as an add-on. In practice this is what decides whether ChatGPT or Perplexity names your business when a buyer asks who to hire in your category. For example, we also configure llms.txt and AI crawler access in robots.txt, so the assistants that read your site are not blocked by accident.

Yes. If you have an existing design system, we build on top of it and respect the tokens you already use for colour, type and spacing. If you are starting from scratch, we develop the design system as part of the engagement and hand it over documented. Either way the system lives in code rather than inside a builder’s settings panel, so it stays consistent across every page and survives changes of developer. In practice we write the front end in Sass with variables for every value, which means a brand colour or a font change is one edit rather than a hunt through templates. For example, on a recent client build the theme runs across 33 Sass files and 11 PHP templates, with no hardcoded values anywhere. Your guidelines become the code, instead of a PDF nobody opens after launch.

After launch you can run the site yourself or keep us on a retainer, and both are real options rather than an upsell. The handoff includes a recorded walkthrough of the CMS, full technical documentation and a post-launch QA check. The person editing the site learns to add a page, publish an article and update content without breaking layout. If you want the site to keep growing, our SEO and organic growth retainer starts at $1,500 a month and the GEO retainer at $350. There is no lock-in contract and you can cancel at any time. In practice most work after launch is content and search rather than code. We measured our own site continuously after launch, tracking response time, schema output and citability, and retainer clients receive that same reporting every month. Nothing breaks if you leave, because you own the code and the documentation goes with it.

A freelance developer builds what you specify. We specify it with you, build it to measurable performance and search standards, and hand off documentation. The difference shows up in what is included by default. A freelance quote usually covers design and code, then treats schema, hreflang, Core Web Vitals, accessibility and AI crawler access as extras or as somebody else’s job. We handle those during the build, because retrofitting them afterwards costs more than doing them once. There are two of us, so you always talk to the person writing the code. For example, when we audited a recruitment site in 2026 we measured its GEO readiness at 28% and delivered the fix list rather than a vague report. In practice you are buying a standard and a method, not a pair of hands. You are buying a standard and a method rather than a pair of hands for hire.