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Static Website Development

Most websites don't need to change for every visitor - they just need to convey information to visitors as efficiently as possible. Their content is mostly "static" text and images, rather than "dynamic" and constantly changing, like on a social media website.

Desite this, these websites are often built on heavy frameworks that require expensive infrastructure and ongoing costs, like Wordpress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla or Django. These platforms are designed to cover many possibilities, but 90% of their technology isn't needed for static websites.

This results in websites that could have been fast and affordable to host, but are either expensive to accommodate their infrastructure requirements, or slow because they're on a server that can't keep up.

I skip the heavy frameworks and build fast, stable, and mobile-friendly websites specific for your business, using minimalist and tidy code, using the "Eleventy" static site generator.

This results in sites which are super fast to load, AND which be hosted on very affordable web hosts.

Some examples: This & That Cafe, Blue Pits and Vegan Prestwich.

How do I edit the site?

The site's contents can be edited through a simple admin interface or directly as text files on your computer. You'll edit the source code of the website directly! This might sound scary, but it's actually very straightforward - and everything is backed up anyway so we can restore to any earlier state.

Can you tell me how it works?

I will gladly explain every aspect of your site to you - from templating to stylesheets and anything else besides. My aim is for you to become confident in taking charge of your site's growth, and adding new areas to its code yourself.

To really succeed online you need to know some fundamentals about structuring your website and creating content - and understanding how web pages are built is a key part of that.

If you're in Prestwich we can even meet over a coffee and cake in a local cafe of your choice to dig into specifics of how to update your site. Bring a laptop along!

If you host with me I'll give you a free year's access to my Patreon marketing club for advice and guidance about online marketing and search engine optimisation.

What is the process?

  1. You choose a template or employ a designer
  2. I build your website using Eleventy
  3. Its content is stored in simple text files
  4. You can edit the content yourself or send me changes
  5. Backups are handled automatically
  6. You get the full source code

Static Website Prices

Like every job, I will provide estimates and charge a flat hourly rate for building static sites, with a breakdown of everything involved. Here are some rough estimates for the stages of the process of a simple "brochure" type website:

  • 2 hours: Base setup
    • Creating an empty site
    • Backing it up via Git
    • Adding a CMS
    • Inviting you to the CMS
    • Auto-publishing to your static host of choice
  • 1-6 hours: Base template
    • Cloning an existing template and updating its text to fit your business, or creating a new template from scratch
  • 1-4 hours: Images
    • Cropping / resizing your images, sourcing designers
  • 1 hour: Domain names
    • Pointing your domain to its new host
  • 1 hour: Email setup
    • Setting up email accounts with your host of choice
  • 1-6 hours: Content
    • Populating your site content, sourcing copywriters

Not all of these stages will be necessary for every site, and you might be able to do some yourself - and I'll be there to guide you if you do.

Let's do it!

If static website development sounds right for your business, contact me today and we can start planning.