Journal
Notes on Craft, on working with studios, and on the parts of a build that only become expensive if you ignore them early. Written by the people doing the work.
Why you probably shouldn't hire an in-house developer
A developer is a fixed cost against variable work. Most studios don't have the pipeline to make that maths land, and the ones that do usually know it already.
Craft vs WordPress, honestly
WordPress wins on cost, hiring and ecosystem. Craft wins on the things a design studio is actually being judged on. Both halves matter.
A Matrix field is a design system, if you build it like one
The gap between a page builder your client enjoys and one they quietly work around is about a dozen decisions, nearly all made in week one.
What a tidy Figma file is worth
Not a lecture about auto layout. A list of the things that genuinely change how long a build takes, in the order they matter.
Every plugin is a subscription your client will forget to renew
Plugins aren't free code. They're a licence, an upgrade path and a security surface, and somebody has to own all three for the life of the site.
Lighthouse 90+ isn't hard, it's just early
Nearly every performance problem we've inherited was a decision made in week one and discovered in week nine.
Accessibility is cheapest in the design file
Contrast, focus order and target size are design decisions. Made in Figma they cost nothing. Made after a client's audit they cost a fortnight.
What we charge, and why we publish it
You can't build a client proposal on "get in touch". So here are the numbers, and the reasoning behind each of them.
Moving a large WordPress site to Craft without losing the rankings
The redirect map is the whole job. Everything else is data entry with extra steps.
The handoff spec we send every studio
One page, six headings. It exists to move the awkward questions to the start, where they're cheap.
Why we only build in one CMS
Specialising is commercially inconvenient and technically excellent. We think the second one wins over five years.
The control panel is part of the design work
Your client judges the site every day through an interface most studios never look at.
Who writes
this lot
Priya Raval
Callum Reid
Nadia Osei
Jonas Weber
Martha Quinn
Ivan Petrov
Sena Yilmaz