WordPress works for buyers who want a plugin-driven CMS, a marketplace of themes, and a community of WordPress-specialist developers. It does not work as well for buyers who need real database relationships, workflows beyond what plugins offer, performance budgets enforced in code, or a codebase a non-WordPress-specialist can maintain. Laravel 13 with Livewire 4 is the right answer when the site needs to do real work; WordPress is the right answer when the site is content-publishing-shaped and the plugin ecosystem covers the workflows.

Do I get the source code, or is it locked to your hosting?

You get the source code, in a Git repository you control, deployed to hosting the team chooses. There is no lock-in to my infrastructure. The handover runbook describes how to deploy and operate the site without me.

Will the new site rank at launch?

SEO is engineered at build time — schema graph, sitemap, canonicals, Core Web Vitals budgets, AI-bot policy. Whether the site ranks for a given term depends on the search engine, the content, the competitive landscape, and time. I do not promise rankings; I promise the artifacts and the technically-sound launch position. The sibling SEO & Core Web Vitals Engineering page describes the deeper SEO engagement.

New Website Build

A website built from scratch on Laravel 13, Livewire 4, and Tailwind 4 — discovery, design, deployment, tests, runbook. Built to inherit.

This is the greenfield engagement. The buyer is a business that wants its first real website or its first non-template website, built by an engineer who will hand back a codebase that does not need a specialist to maintain. The deliverable is the deployed site, the Pest test suite, the CI pipeline, the schema graph and sitemap generators wired into the build, and the README runbook a second engineer can execute.

The parent — Website Creation & Redesign — sets the four-artifact perimeter; this page is the greenfield shape of the work. Redesigns are scoped on the sibling Website Redesign & Modernization page.

What "real website" means

A real website earns traffic by being technically sound, content-rich, fast, accessible, and structured for the search engines and AI crawlers that send the traffic. It does not depend on a plugin marketplace, a template subscription, or a third-party page builder that may be acquired and sunsetted next quarter. The data lives in a real database with real relationships. The pages are generated from that database, not hand-edited in a CMS that loses the formatting on copy-paste.

Discovery

One to two weeks. Information architecture — the page types, the URL structure, the navigation hierarchy. Content inventory — what exists, what needs to be written, who is writing it. Design direction — palette, typography, voice, component vocabulary. Performance and accessibility budgets agreed in writing. Search Console verification and AI-bot policy scoped before the first sprint.

Build

Laravel 13 with Livewire 4 for any interactive surface, Tailwind 4 for styling, Flux UI where the component vocabulary fits, Pest 4 tests, Pint-enforced style. Authentication via Fortify where the site needs accounts. Sanctum for any API surface. Queues for anything that takes longer than a request cycle. Schema graphs generated from the database. Sitemap regenerated on publish.

Deploy

Provisioned hosting (Forge, Vapor, or the buyer's existing platform). CI pipeline that runs Pest and Pint on every push and blocks merges on red. Search Console verification. Post-launch runbook covering deploy, rollback, common operational tasks, and the inevitable "the newsletter signup form is acting weird" Tuesday-morning question.

What I ship

Discovery deliverables. Information architecture, content inventory, design direction, budgets, in writing.
The site itself. Laravel 13 + Livewire 4 + Tailwind 4 build with Pest 4 tests, Pint style, schema graph, sitemap generator.
Authentication and account surface. Fortify, Sanctum for APIs, role and permission policy.
Deployment. Provisioned hosting, CI pipeline, Search Console verification, AI-bot policy in robots.txt.
Runbook. README a second engineer can execute, with deploy, rollback, and common-task procedures.
30-day post-launch support window. For the questions that surface after the first content-update cycle.

Where it fits

First real website

The business is past the Squarespace-template phase. The brand has matured; the operations have grown; the workflows the site needs to host are beyond what a template will support.

Replacement for a third-party page builder

The site is on Webflow, Wix, or a similar builder. The builder works until it does not — the day the buyer needs a workflow the builder does not support, or the day the builder's pricing changes.

From WordPress, fresh start

The buyer has been on WordPress for a decade. The plugin debt is unmanageable. Rather than untangle, the buyer wants a fresh build with the existing content migrated and the dead plugins left behind. (If preserving SEO equity is the priority, the sibling Redesign & Modernization page covers the 301-map shape.)

How I work

Discovery delivers the written plan before the first sprint. Implementation runs in two-week sprints with a working demo at the end of each. Pest tests are written alongside features, not bolted on. Pint runs on every commit. The principal carrying the work is described on the about page; patterns from prior builds live in the research notes.

Engagement model

Discovery runs one to two weeks. Build runs six to twelve weeks depending on scope. Handover includes the deployed site, the test suite, the runbook, and a 30-day post-launch support window. To scope a new website build, get in touch.