👈 Back to "Examples"

Indie Games Studio Website

Button Kin is an indie tabletop roleplaying games studio that operates from the same Prestwich building as Chobble - because my wife runs it from our home!

The ButtonKin.com homepage, showing a pink theme with links saying "Home", "About", "Games", "Adventures", "Blog"

It's a static website - edited through simple text files - with a blog, listings of games and adventures, links through to buy the games, and connections to social media sites.

A site like this takes me between 3 and 10 hours depending on how tricked out you'd like it. The really time-consuming part is your job - writing game descriptions, editing images, and creating products on Stripe, but I can help you figure that stuff out too.

It loads super fast compared to those heavy WordPress or Squarespace sites that bog down indie creators. And because it ranks above third-party stores, your customers can buy directly from you - meaning no commission fees.

Techie Speccies

  • It's an Eleventy website (11ty.dev) - a fast, customisable framework using JavaScript.
  • It is loosely based on the Chobble Template with plenty of customisations. This meant we get some nice things out of the box, like RSS feeds, Sitemaps, and responsive images.
  • The site is automatically re-built and re-deployed whenever its source code is modified, using Forgejo Actions (which as basically the same as Github actions).
  • It is hosted on Neocities (neocities.org/site/buttonkin) - the perfect home for a quirky, indie website.
  • It collects subscriptions to a Buttondown newsletter list.
  • It gets Lighthouse scores of 95+ - Google's system for determining how fast, accessible, and search engine friendly a website is.
  • I've set up Stripe payment links embedded directly - all the product management happens in the Stripe dashboard, and customers select their postage during checkout
  • It also has links to Itch.io and DriveThruRPG for wider reach
  • It uses Bootstrap 4 styling (that's legacy from when I upgraded it from Jekyll - nowadays I'd use flexbox)
  • Price syncing between the site and Stripe is manual - though I could add a future update that reads those prices via the API

Free TTRPG website template

Want to build your own TTRPG site? You can download the template for free - it's open source under the AGPLv3 license. I've included everything you need: blog system, game listings, Stripe integration, newsletter signup, responsive images, SEO optimization, and automated deployment.

Download the Button Kin template

Because the code to this site is open source and released under the copyleft AGPLv3 license, you can modify it as much as you like yourself, at no cost.

Starting with a fully populated site is a great way to build your own, and you could be up running with a duplicate of the Button Kin site in about 30 minutes with the setup instructions I've included.

You'll need to be comfortable in the command line to install Eleventy, but it's probably easier than you think. Perfect for indie game studios who want to DIY their website.

How much did it cost?

This site was free, because it was for my wife and I love her very much!

If you're not my wife and you want a similar site for your own indie games studio you'd qualify for my 50% discounted rate (see prices) as an artist. Depending on how much customisation you want the site would take between three and ten hours, meaning a price somewhere between £300 and £1,000.

You could host the site for free if you used something like Github Pages or Netlify, or you could host with me for £20/month and I'll handle backups and monitoring, and give you free SEO advice too.

FAQ

How long does a TTRPG website take?
I can usually get you from concept to live site in 3-10 hours of development time, depending on how much customisation you need. I could definitely be sorted within a week if you've already got your content and images sorted.

What's included?
I'll set you up with a blog system, game and adventure listings, newsletter signup, Stripe payments, responsive image processing, RSS feeds, JSON-LD structured data, mobile-responsive design, and automated deployment.

Is it easy to edit?
Yes - I build them for easy content updates through simple text files. You won't need any technical knowledge for adding games or blog posts. If you want it even easier, I could set you up with PagesCMS (pagescms.org) - that gives you a visual editor so you can update content without touching any code files.

Template or custom build?
I'd say try the template if you're comfortable with command line basics. Get me to do a custom build if that sounds intimidating, or ask a nerdy friend to set up the template for you.

Let's do it!

Alright - glad to have convinced you! Contact me via your preferred method to get the ball rolling. I take 50% payment up front and 50% on completion, and I can probably get started pretty quickly.

Want the free template instead? Download it here