dot832.com, LLC

Custom WordPress Design & Development — Built for Your Business, Not a Template

A custom WordPress site should solve real business problems, not just look good in a portfolio. Every dot832 project is personally designed, developed, and delivered by founder Tim Burkart — 25+ years of experience applied directly to your site, with fixed pricing and no hand-offs.

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Most wordpress sites aren’t built — they’re assembled

The WordPress industry has a quality problem. A typical “custom” WordPress site is a pre-built theme with the client’s logo dropped in, populated by junior developers working from a template, and handed off the moment it launches.

That’s not what we do.

A dot832 WordPress site is actually custom — designed around your business goals, your audience, and your operational reality. We don’t start with a theme and force your business to fit it. We start with strategy, build a design around it, and develop the site around the design. The code is clean, the architecture is intentional, and the same person who proposed the project is the one who delivers it.

This approach takes longer than the theme-and-template model. It also produces sites that perform better, last longer, and don’t need to be rebuilt every three years.

If you want a generic WordPress site fast and cheap, there are agencies that will sell you one. If you want a site built right — with the kind of care and depth that produces something genuinely worth having — that’s what we do.

What we build

We build custom WordPress sites for organizations that need a site to actually do something — generate leads, support operations, represent a serious brand, or grow with the business. Three engagement types cover most of our work:

New WordPress Websites

For organizations launching online for the first time, or starting from scratch after outgrowing what they had.

A new site engagement includes:

  • Strategic discovery — business goals, audience analysis, competitive review, content strategy
  • Information architecture and sitemap planning
  • Custom design (mockups, revisions, approval before development begins)
  • WordPress development with clean, maintainable code
  • Content development support (we write, edit, or guide as needed)
  • SEO foundation — technical SEO, on-page optimization, schema markup, performance built in from day one
  • Accessibility considerations (WCAG-aligned design and code)
  • Pre-launch QA across browsers, devices, and use cases
  • Launch coordination and DNS/hosting setup
  • Post-launch training and documentation

Typical timeline: 8-12 weeks.

WordPress Redesigns

For organizations whose current WordPress site no longer matches the business — outdated design, broken functionality, performance issues, or simply a site that doesn’t reflect what the organization has become.

A redesign engagement includes:

  • Audit of the existing site — what’s working, what’s not, what needs to stay
  • Strategic discovery and refreshed positioning work as needed
  • Design refresh or full redesign, depending on scope
  • Architecture improvements and information hierarchy updates
  • Code modernization and performance optimization
  • SEO preservation — protecting existing rankings while improving the foundation
  • Content migration with optimization where appropriate
  • Pre-launch QA and post-launch monitoring

Typical timeline: 6-10 weeks.

Custom WordPress Development

For organizations that need WordPress to do something specific that off-the-shelf solutions can’t handle — custom plugins, custom post types, complex integrations, membership systems, learning management functionality, or workflow automation.

Custom development engagements include:

  • Technical discovery and scoping
  • Custom plugin or feature development
  • Third-party integrations (CRM, payment, email, analytics, etc.)
  • Custom post type and field architecture
  • Custom Gutenberg blocks
  • API integrations and automation
  • Testing and documentation
  • Handoff and training

Typical timeline: Varies widely, typically 4-12 weeks.

Who We Build For

After 25 years and 50+ projects, we have a clear sense of who we serve best — and who’s better served elsewhere. The clients who get the most out of working with us tend to share a few characteristics:

  • Small and mid-sized businesses that need a serious site representing a serious business — not a hobby project.
  • Nonprofits and mission-driven organizations that need professional, accessible, low-maintenance sites without paying agency prices for agency overhead. We’ve worked extensively in this space, including organizations like Hands For an African Child and Adaptive Technologies.
  • Professional services firms — consultants, advisors, agencies, specialty practices — where the site needs to communicate expertise and capture qualified inquiries.
  • Churches and faith-based organizations with specific content, community, and event-management needs.
  • Product entrepreneurs and early-stage companies building marketing sites that need to scale alongside the business.
  • Other agencies as a white-label partner — design firms, marketing agencies, and consultancies that need senior WordPress execution without building an in-house dev team.

Who we’re not the right fit for: organizations that want the cheapest possible site, the fastest possible turnaround, or a template-based build. There are good options elsewhere for those needs.

How a wordpress project actually works

  1. Discovery. We start with a working conversation — not a sales pitch and not a 40-question intake form. We talk through your business, your goals, your current site (if any), your audience, your constraints, and what success actually looks like. Usually 45–60 minutes. Free.
  2. Proposal. Within a week of discovery, you receive a written proposal with detailed scope, milestones, timeline, and fixed pricing. Every assumption is documented. Every deliverable is named. No surprises waiting to ambush you mid-project.
  3. Strategy and Design. Once we’re under contract, we move into strategy work — information architecture, content planning, design direction — followed by visual design. You review, revise, and approve design before any development begins.
  4. Development. The site is built on a staging environment you can see and review at any time. We share progress at agreed-upon milestones, not just at the end. You always have direct access to me.
  5. Content, QA, and Launch. Content goes in (whether you write it, we write it, or we collaborate), QA runs across browsers and devices, and we launch with a coordinated cutover — typically with zero downtime.
  6. Training and Handoff. You leave the project knowing how to use your site. We provide documentation, training, and a clear handoff. You’re not stranded.
  7. (Optional) Ongoing Partnership. Most clients move into a Care Plan after launch — keeping the site secure, fast, and supported by the same person who built it. Not required, always available.

What sets our wordpress work apart

  • Truly custom — not a theme reskin. We don’t start with a theme and force your business to fit it. We start with your business and build the site around it. The result: a site that does what you actually need it to do, not what the theme allowed for.
  • Built by the person who proposed it. The senior expert on the sales call is the same person designing and developing your site. No bait-and-switch to junior staff after contracts are signed.
  • SEO and performance built in, not bolted on. Technical SEO, Core Web Vitals optimization, structured data, accessibility, and clean semantic markup are part of how we build — not extras we upsell. Sites we deliver are ready to rank, not waiting for an SEO retainer to make them functional.
  • Fixed-price proposals. The price is the price. We don’t charge by the hour, we don’t bill for “scope changes” that should have been anticipated, and we don’t surprise you with a different number at the end. If a project takes us longer than expected, that’s our problem.

Investment

WordPress projects vary in price more than almost any other agency service — anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a template-based site to six figures for enterprise builds. Our pricing sits in the middle: serious-business pricing without big-agency overhead.

New WordPress websites are priced depending on scope, complexity, content development needs, and custom functionality.

Redesigns are priced depending on how much of the existing site survives the redesign and how much new work is needed.

Custom development is scoped per project. Smaller custom builds (a single plugin, a specific integration) can start in the low four figures. Larger custom builds scale from there.

Every project gets a fixed-price proposal after discovery. No hourly billing, no scope creep, no surprise invoices.

Frequently Asked Questions

For our clients and the types of sites we build, most new custom WordPress projects range fall below $10,000, depending on scope, complexity, and custom functionality. Redesigns of existing sites are typically lower. Custom development engagements are scoped per project. Every project gets a fixed-price proposal after a free discovery conversation, so you know the full investment before committing.

A themed site starts with a pre-built design template and fits your business into it — usually a fast, inexpensive build with limited flexibility. A custom site starts with your business goals and builds the design and code around them. Custom sites take longer and cost more, but they perform better, last longer, and aren’t constrained by what the theme allows. We build custom.

Most new sites take 8–12 weeks from kickoff to launch. Redesigns take 6–10 weeks. Custom development engagements vary. Timelines depend significantly on content readiness — projects often stretch when client-side content is slow to finalize. We’ll be honest about realistic timelines during discovery.

Yes. We build WordPress sites to be easy for non-developers to maintain. You’ll get training and documentation at handoff. For clients who’d rather not handle ongoing maintenance themselves, our Care Plans take that off your plate entirely.

Both options work. Many clients provide their own content, and we optimize and structure it during development. For clients who’d rather have us handle it, we offer content development as part of the project — included or scoped separately depending on volume.

We can. Managed WordPress hosting is available as part of our higher-tier Care Plans, or we can recommend appropriate hosting based on your needs. We’re also happy to work with hosting you already have, provided it can run a modern WordPress site reliably.

Yes. Technical SEO is built into every site we deliver — clean URL structures, semantic markup, structured data, fast page speed, mobile responsiveness, and Core Web Vitals optimization are standard. We don’t sell SEO as a separate add-on for things every site should have at launch. For dedicated ongoing SEO strategy and content/link work, we partner with a trusted independent specialist and can introduce you when that’s the right next step.

Yes. We’ve built WooCommerce stores ranging from small product catalogs to more complex multi-product setups. WooCommerce is the right answer for many WordPress sites that need e-commerce; for larger or higher-volume operations, we’ll honestly evaluate whether a dedicated e-commerce platform is a better fit before recommending WooCommerce.

You can move into a Care Plan for ongoing maintenance and support, engage us on retainer for continued development, or simply have us on standby for future projects. We don’t lock clients into anything post-launch — most stay because they want to.

Yes. About two-thirds of our clients are outside Utah, spread across the U.S. The founder-led model works equally well remotely — video calls, shared project workspaces, and clear communication. Distance has never been an obstacle.

Sometimes — it depends on the state of the existing work. If the foundation is solid, we can build on it. If it’s a mess, it’s often faster and cheaper to start over than to untangle someone else’s code. We’ll give you an honest assessment after reviewing what exists. (For broader site rescues, see Migrations & Rescues.)

Ready to build something worth having?

Every project starts with a free discovery conversation — your business, your goals, your situation. From there, we’ll let you know whether we’re a good fit, what an engagement would look like, and what it would cost. No pressure, no high-pressure sales. Just a clear conversation about whether we’re the right team for what you need.

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