How I build
No mysteries. Here is the whole thing.
Most web shops keep the process vague on purpose, because vague is easier to bill against. So here is every step, what it costs you in time, and what you walk away owning. Read it before you talk to me, not after.
Tucson built
You own the code
Flat quotes
One person
The rules
Four things I will not bend on
Everything below this is just detail. These four are the actual argument.
All of it
You own it
The code, the domain, the host account, the logins. In your name, on your card, from day one. I am a contractor, not a landlord.
No trapdoors
Open source underneath
WordPress and web standards. Nothing proprietary that only I can open, nothing that stops working the day you stop paying me.
No AI slop
Built by hand
I write the markup and the CSS. No page builder spitting out forty nested divs, no generated filler copy nobody proofread.
The one you hired
One person
You email me, I answer. No account manager translating your question into a ticket for a junior you will never meet.
Start to finish
Five phases
Two to eight weeks end to end depending on size. You know which phase we are in at all times, because I tell you.
Phase 01
We talk
A week, usually less
You tell me what the business does and what is not working. I ask the annoying questions now so they do not become change orders later. Who actually buys from you, what makes the phone ring, what your last site got wrong.
Ends with one flat number and a timeline in writing. If what you need is a four hour fix and not a rebuild, this is where I say so, even though the rebuild pays me better.
Phase 02
I map it
Two to four days
Sitemap, page by page. What each page is for, who lands on it, what it has to get them to do next. Boring, and it is the step everyone skips.
You approve the map before I open a design tool. Moving a page here costs nothing. Moving it after the build costs both of us.
Phase 03
Design
One to two weeks
Real content in real layouts. Your actual words, your actual photos, at the actual sizes. No lorem ipsum, no stock photo of a handshake in an office nobody works in.
Two rounds of revisions built into the price. Most people use one. You see it on your own phone before anybody calls it done.
Phase 04
Build
One to four weeks
Hand written markup and CSS, mobile first, tested on real hardware and not just a resized browser window. Fast because the code is small, not because a caching plugin is papering over four megabytes of javascript.
You get a staging link the first week and it stays live the whole build. Watch it come together, catch things early.
Phase 05
Launch and hand off
One day, then it is yours
DNS, SSL, redirects from the old URLs so your search rankings survive, analytics, backups. Then a walkthrough recorded on video and written down, in plain English, for the things you will want to change yourself.
The handoff is the part most shops do badly on purpose. Mine ends with you able to run the thing without me.
Every phase ends with something you can look at and approve. The price is fixed before phase 01 starts.
What is actually under it
The stack, named
Naming the tools is the proof. Anybody can say handcrafted. Not everybody will tell you exactly what is installed and why.
The base
WordPress
Runs a chunk of the web, which means help exists everywhere and you are never stuck waiting on me. Open source, so nobody can revoke it.
The builder
Bricks
Outputs clean markup instead of the div soup most builders produce. Licensed to you, not rented from me.
The address
Your own host
In your name, on your card. I will set it up and I will recommend one, but the account is yours and I never sit between you and it.
The insurance
Real backups
Off site and automatic. Tested by actually restoring one, which is the only way to know a backup works.
The plumbing
SEOPress
Titles, schema, sitemaps, redirects. The technical layer, done once, properly, instead of sold back to you monthly.
The look
Plain CSS
Written by hand against a token system, so every page on the site uses the same spacing, the same type and the same colors. Consistency by construction.
Every one of those is yours, licensed in your name. See what a build includes.
The other half
And what I refuse to do
Seven habits the industry treats as normal. Every one of them exists to make leaving hard, and none of them make your site better. In fact, it usually has a shelf-life of 1-2 years max. Not my builds.
- No hostage hosting where leaving means losing the site
- No proprietary page builder you cannot open without me
- No AI written copy or design passed off as though I did it
- No junior doing the work while you paid for me
- No mandatory sales call before anyone will tell you a price
- No three month build for a five page site
Ask me anything
The questions people are too polite to ask
What if you get hit by a bus?
Everything is in your accounts, in your name, built on WordPress. Any competent developer can pick it up on day one. That is most of the reason I build the way I do.
Why are you cheaper than an agency?
There is no agency. No account manager, no strategist, no office on Speedway with a foosball table. One person with low overhead and thirty years of doing this.
Why are you more expensive than a template?
Because a template is a template. If a nine dollar theme genuinely solves your problem, I will tell you that and point you at one. Sometimes it does.
Do you use AI at all?
For my own tooling and grunt work, yes. Not for your copy, not for your design, and not for code I have not read and understood. You are paying for judgement, and judgement is the part that cannot be generated.
What happens six months after launch?
Whatever you want. Care Plan if you would rather I handle it, nothing at all if you would rather drive it yourself. Both are fine and neither is a condition of the build.
I write about this stuff more than anybody asked me to. Read the articles.
Still reading
Then you already know how this goes.
Tell me what the business does and what is not working. I will tell you which phase you actually need to start at, and what it runs. No call required.
Veteran owned, nonprofit, or a member? Your discounts stack, and they come off the flat quote before you agree to anything.