Will I lose my Google rankings if I migrate off WordPress or Wix?

You should not, if the 301 redirect map is complete and the schema graph is migrated cleanly. Most replatform traffic drops come from broken 301 maps, lost canonicals, schema that no longer validates, or sitemaps pointing at pages the new platform serves as 404. I audit those before any code changes and verify the redirect map across the next crawl cycle in Search Console.

Why Laravel 12 instead of WordPress or a Next.js / React SPA?

Laravel 12 with Livewire 3 collapses the front and back ends into one mental model — a single engineer ships features end to end without a separate API contract or JS build pipeline. The maintenance cost drops accordingly. WordPress works for buyers who want a plugin-driven CMS; SPAs work for application-shaped products. For a real website that needs to do real work — gated content, member areas, structured catalogs, schema generated from a real database — Laravel 12 is the path of least friction.

Do you promise SEO rankings, or guarantee a Lighthouse score?

I promise the artifacts: the JSON-LD schema graph that validates against the Rich Results Test, the database-driven sitemap, the 301 redirect map, the Core Web Vitals dashboard. I do not promise rankings — those are owned by the search engine, not by the engineer fixing the plumbing. I will, however, show you the measured before-and-after on the signals the engine actually consumes.

Website Creation & Redesign

Laravel 12, Livewire 3, Tailwind 4 builds and redesigns — SEO, Core Web Vitals, mobile-first, accessibility, and a 301 map that preserves the equity an existing site has earned.

Real websites, built for the field test.

Laravel 12 + Livewire 3 + Tailwind 4. Schema, sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, accessibility, and mobile-first responsive — build-time defaults, not post-launch upsells.

Real websites for businesses — Laravel 12, Livewire 3, Tailwind 4 — built or rebuilt with SEO, Core Web Vitals, a proper database, and mobile-first responsive design as defaults, not as upsells. Greenfield builds for buyers ready to skip the WordPress phase entirely, and redesigns for businesses whose Wix, Squarespace, or 40-plugin WordPress install has hit a ceiling.

Most "fast" websites are slow. Most "SEO-optimized" sites have broken canonicals, drifting sitemaps, and schema that no longer validates against the current rich-results spec. Most "mobile-friendly" sites pass the marketing copy and fail the field test on a real mid-range Android. I build sites where SEO, speed, accessibility, and maintainability are non-negotiable build-time defaults — and I prove them with measurable artifacts: Lighthouse reports on real URLs, Search Console crawl stats, the test suite in CI, and the runbook in the README.

I do not promise rankings. Search results are owned by the search engine, not by the engineer building the site. What I promise is the artifacts: the JSON-LD schema graph, the database-driven sitemap generator, the 301 redirect map that preserves the SEO equity an existing site has earned, the Core Web Vitals dashboard wired into the build pipeline. The ranking that follows from clean signals is the search engine's call.

James Henderson is a computer scientist with 25-plus years as an architect, engineer, and application designer. The Laravel 12 / Livewire 3 / Tailwind 4 stack on this page is the stack he uses on his own site and on every web engagement — chosen for the server-state-first developer ergonomics, the small staffing footprint, and the long Laravel support horizon. He pairs disciplined engineering with current AI tooling — Claude Code, Codex, and a working judgment about when to trust them — to ship products faster and at higher quality than traditional staffing allows. There is no offshore team behind the page. The principal carries the work end to end: scope, build, deploy, support. A B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Houston and service in the U.S. Army ground the tone — evidence over assertion, plans before code, verification before delivery.

SEO and speed are built in, not bolted on

Most websites get their SEO and performance from a plugin installed on launch day. The plugin works for six months, the search engine updates a validator, and the site is silently broken until someone notices traffic has slipped. I build the SEO and the Core Web Vitals into the application layer — schema generated from the database, sitemaps generated on publish, canonical and redirect architecture defined in code, Core Web Vitals budgets enforced in CI. None of that depends on a plugin staying current.

The same discipline applies to accessibility. WCAG 2.2 AA is a build-time requirement, not a post-launch retrofit. Mobile-first responsive design is tested on the small screen first, scaled up — not designed on a 27-inch monitor and resized in the last week. The site survives a non-technical content editor adding pages without breaking the design system.

What the four breakdown services cover

New website build

A website built from scratch on Laravel 12, Livewire 3, and Tailwind 4 — discovery, design, content, deployment, tests, runbook. For the buyer ready to skip the WordPress phase entirely and start on a stack that will not need rebuilding in two years.

Website redesign and modernization

A migration off WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or hand-rolled PHP onto Laravel 12 with the existing SEO equity preserved. Includes an audit of the current site, a 301 redirect map covering every URL that has earned traffic, and a content migration that leaves the dead plugins behind.

SEO and Core Web Vitals engineering

Engineering for how search engines (classic and AI) crawl, parse, and index the site. JSON-LD schema graphs, database-driven sitemaps, LCP / INP / CLS budgets in the build pipeline, and named AI-bot policy in robots.txt. The deliverable is the artifact and the measured before-and-after — not a promised ranking.

Database architecture and mobile-first engineering

The data model and the responsive front end the rest of the site rides on. Schema design with real relationships and validation, mobile-first responsive design with accessibility as a build requirement, and a component library that survives a non-developer adding pages.

The patterns behind these systems — sitemap exclusion at the SQL layer, canonical groupings, Core Web Vitals diagnosis from Chrome User Experience Report field data — are running on the page you are reading. Several are written up in the research notes. The principal carrying the work is described on the about page.

The contract is the artifact. Schema graph, sitemap generator, 301 map, Core Web Vitals dashboard — named deliverables, not promised rankings.
The stack is current. Laravel 12, Livewire 3, Tailwind 4, Pest 4, PHP 8.4 — no plugins, no Wix lock-in, no aging custom framework.
The codebase is inheritable. Pest tests, Pint style, a runbook, and a Git history a second engineer can read.

What I ship

New Laravel 12 website builds. Information architecture, design, Livewire 3 components, Tailwind 4 styling, Pest 4 tests, Pint-enforced style, CI pipeline, deployment, runbook.
Website redesigns and replatforms. Off WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or aging custom stacks onto Laravel 12 — with a 301 map covering every URL that has earned traffic.
SEO and Core Web Vitals engineering. JSON-LD schema graphs, database-driven sitemap generation, LCP / INP / CLS budgets enforced in CI, canonical and redirect architecture in code.
Database architecture and mobile-first engineering. Real schema with real relationships, mobile-first responsive design, WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility as a build requirement.
AI-bot policy in robots.txt. Named per crawler — GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot — with the policy chosen per bot rather than a blanket wildcard.
Search Console verification and ongoing monitoring. Rich-result triage, structured-data regression alerts, post-deploy verification wired into the release process.
Deployment and handover. Provisioned hosting, CI pipeline, README runbook, 30-day post-launch support window.

Engagement model

Discovery runs one to two weeks for greenfield builds, two to three weeks for replatforms (the audit and 301 map take longer than a new sitemap). Implementation runs in two-week sprints with a working demo at the end of each, a Git history you can read, and Pest tests that run in CI. Handover includes the deployed application, the test suite, the deployment runbook, the schema and sitemap generators wired up, the Core Web Vitals dashboard, and a 30-day support window for the inevitable questions that surface after launch. I do not promise rankings; I promise the artifacts and the measured signals. To scope a build, get in touch.