Next.js · React · Node
Web applications for businesses and Not for Profits. Built to load quick, get found by Google, and still be workable in five years. We run our own sites on the same stack, so the example below is one we can show you in full rather than describe around.
Nobody rings up wanting a Next.js application. They ring up because one of these is happening.
It was a good fit back when it was five pages. Now there are members, bookings, a directory or a dashboard bolted on through plugins, and every small change turns into a negotiation with the theme. There comes a point where the template costs more than a build would have.
People log in. They submit things, search, filter, see their own data. That is software. It wants building as software, even when it still has to look like a website and rank like one.
Five seconds to load and you have lost people before they arrived. Google notices too. Most of the fix is architectural: deciding what gets built ahead of time and what genuinely has to be fetched while someone waits.
Plenty of modern sites render entirely in the browser, so a crawler turns up and finds an empty page. Getting search visibility and app-like behaviour at the same time is a decision you make early or pay for later.
Client work is usually confidential. This one is ours, it is public, and every decision in it is one we would make again.
Worked example
AllSwims.au
A free public map and directory of where to swim in Australia. Ocean events, surf clubs, public pools, rock pools, cold-water clubs and inland water holes, all in one searchable place.
It looks simple, which is the point. Underneath sits a database of a couple of thousand locations, a national map, and a content system that has to be open to search engines and shut to bulk copying at the same time.
The reasons we build this way, rather than a list of the technologies we build with.
2,054
records, one map
AllSwims.au is a national directory of swim spots. Events, pools, ocean baths, surf clubs, water holes. Served as a fast public map with no login and no sign-up wall in the way.
Sub-second
first paint
Pages are rendered ahead of time on the server, so they turn up complete. The interactive map loads separately, after the content the visitor actually came for.
Indexed,
not harvestable
Every page is visible to Google while the underlying dataset never ships to the browser in bulk. Findable and copyable are two different problems and they want different answers.
One person
runs it
Built so the ordinary upkeep takes minutes, not days. Managed hosting, managed database, deploy on push, no server sitting there waiting to be patched.
Front end and back end both. If yours is on the list we have done it before, and if it is not, ask anyway.
For a site that is mostly pages, you should. We build those too, and we will say so when that is the right answer. The rough line is this: if people mainly read it, use a CMS. If they log in, submit, search or see their own data, it is an application, and building it as one works out cheaper over its life than fighting a template every time you want a change.
Yes, if it is built to. The risk is that pages render only in the browser, so a crawler turns up to nothing. We render on the server, so every page arrives as finished HTML with its own title, description and structured data. Search visibility is an architectural call you make at the start, not a plugin you add at the end.
A focused first version is usually six to twelve weeks, depending on how much of it is genuinely new. We would rather ship something real and build on it than disappear for six months and come back with a surprise. You see working software early and often.
Usually far less than people expect. Managed hosting and a managed database both scale down when the site is quiet, so a low-traffic site can run on tens of dollars a month rather than the cost of a server sitting idle waiting for a busy week that comes twice a year.
You own the code and the data, and it is written so someone else can read it. No proprietary framework, no licence to keep paying, nothing locked to us. We would rather be kept on because the work is good.
Tell us what people need to do that they cannot do now, and roughly how many of them there are. That is enough for us to say whether this is a build or a much smaller job. And if it is the smaller job, we will tell you.
