No. I do not offer hosting. I would also advise you to investigate carefully which hosting company to use as although they may all look the same on the surface there are many differences in the services they can offer and the ease of working with them. I previously used Siteground.co.uk for many years for all my sites but due to a second major issue in 2024 with their service I am no longer willing to recommend them. I am slowly moving all my personal sites and friends and family sites across to Allsimple.net and so far have no regrets about making that move, especially as Allsimple.net's prices are highly attractive.
A significant benefit of you taking charge of your own hosting is, that if anything happens to me or you want to re-build your website with a different developer you have total control of it! I have had several clients now who previously had a website built by another developer but have lost contact with them and can do nothing about it. I can of course build them a new site with a new domain but I cannot do anything about the old one. They have to wait for the hosting contract to expire for the old site to disappear. This interferes with the rankings of the new website because the redundant domain is older than the new one that I build.
So I would always encourage you to take out your own hosting package so that you have control over it and you are not be totally dependant on one individual developer for this, no matter how trustworthy they may be. I include myself in this because no-one knows what may happen in the future!
Yes absolutely. Most of the sites I build currently have full control over text blocks using an in-built content management system, controlled from an Admin page. A high percentage of my sites also use a blogging tool which can be used for so much more than merely blogging. It can also be used for maintaining staff profiles, reviews and anything else that resembles a list of items that need to be maintained.
Yes of course but you may not need it. I provide a pop-up section on the Admin page which will give you the basics but it is a very easy system to use compared to most content management systems I have seen. Trust me it is very intuitive. I have been told by one of my clients that it is a lot easier to use than Wordpress.
Yes of course you can. I understand that it is a big ask for many people to produce multiple pages of text and there is no point me producing pages with no content. Usually, once we have established a style for the Home page, the following pages can easily be created using previous pages as a template.
Yes absolutely. All my sites are built as mobile first websites and performance on mobile devices is carefully measured to ensure the best performance on a sub-optimal network.
I will need some text content that you would like to see on the Home page to get started with building a sample Home page. Contact details, icons for membership groups if appropriate. You may have some ideas about images and colours. If not I can point you to some sources for images and the colour scheme may emerge from your choice of imagery. If you have some sites that you like the look of, then let me know and I can probably use the site as a template for the site build.
No. I used to use themes but I always found them too restrictive. Nowadays all my work is custom built so you as a client have the final say. You can send me a link to a site you like and I will try and emulate it or you can go with how I'm thinking and comment on it in the early stages of building the Home page so we get the styling the way you want it.
There are several scenarios where a different approach may be needed but my usual method of working is to start by building a prototype Home page on one of my test sites which you can then have full access to, in order that you can approve of the design and request changes to it. Once we've agreed on the style of the Home page it's usually a simple matter to create the other pages accordingly. I can build the whole site this way on a test website address and port it over to your real website address when you are happy to sign it off. This includes any content you enter via the Admin pages on the test site. You won't lose any of this content during the migration to the live site.
As far as possible I will try and make sure that you do not incur additional costs. For example, I will use free Google fonts if possible. I will source appropriate images and icons from free sources where possible and I believe it is perfectly possible to build most sites in this way.
However you may want something different for your site. If you require special fonts or very high quality images (such as the banner image on my Home page), then it may be necessary to make additional purchases. If you need a booking system or a subscription sign up to a newsletter system then that external booking engine or newsletter system will carry an additional subscription fee which will be for you to manage.
The tool is use (Rapidweaver) builds robust websites using HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP code. These sites are not prone to being hacked like some frameworks are and many of my sites are still running sweetly, years after they were first built without having received any maintenance in that time. So the short answer is that: no you should not expect to have to pay for regular maintenance. (If you were to have a Wordpress site built for you by another developer you should be thinking about having that site maintained on a regular basis, monthly or even weekly). If the Wordpress developer does not specify that upfront then you should ask some searching questions.
There is however a chance that a couple of things may happen with my Rapidweaver sites:
If any problems arise then I will deal with each website on a case by case basis. I have actually saved some of my clients money in 2024 by encouraging them to move hosting company. This is not a huge amount of work for me to transfer a site to another hosting company. I always try and keep the costs down for my clients wherever I can safely do so.
My hourly rate may change in the future but as of March 2025 my hourly rate is £25.
Be prepared to outline what sort of website you are looking for, roughly how many pages do you need, do you require blogging, contact forms and the ability to log into an admin page and change/add content yourself? Do you have any style requirements? Have you seen a website already that you like the design of?
After a career spanning 33 years in IT, I since have 13 years of website design experience.
Please check out my reviews on my Home page
I will give you an approximate idea of timescales. A large consideration is how much time you yourself can devote to the project. Having taught Project Management techniques at GE I understand the importance of keeping you informed regarding progress and issues, if any.
I have been building small scale business websites since 2012
I promise you a no-bullshit approach. If you ask me a question and I don't know the answer I will say so. I built my career with GE on my ability to explain to non-IT people complex IT matters in plain English.