← Ben Doyle Gray · Archived design 41.8226° N   88.1804° W  ·  Warrenville, IL

Code Less Traveled

Your competitor bought the same website template you did. Most small business websites are rented, generic, and slower than they should be. I'm the one who will build you something that's none of those.

The ground covered The ground unexplored

STOP 01

Where you are now

You don't need to know what's wrong to know that something is. This is the ground most people are standing on when they email me.

  • Looks wrong on a phoneMore than half your customers are on one.
  • You can't reach whoever built itVery common. Not your fault.
  • Paying monthly, unclear whyOften for something you already own.
  • Slow to loadPeople leave at three seconds load time.
  • Can't change your own hoursYou should be able to. That's fixable.
  • Doesn't come up in searchUsually a handful of boring problems.

STOP 02

The route ahead

Four stops, and you know where you are at every one. No stretch where you're waiting and wondering whether anything is happening.

  1. You email meTell me what you do and what's bothering you. No form to fill in.Same day
  2. We talk onceHalf an hour. I tell you what I actually think it needs.30 min
  3. You get a numberFixed price in writing, with what's included spelled out.2–3 days
  4. I build itYou see it as it goes, not only at the end.4–6 weeks

STOP 03

Choose your own adventure

Three paths to choose from. The number I quote is the one you pay.

Scale of charges
Services compared by what they include and what they cost
The SurveyStart here if you're not sure I go over what you've got and write you a plain-English report: what's slow, what's broken, what's worth keeping, and what fixing each part costs. Yours to keep, and no obligation to hire me afterwards. Take it to another developer if you'd rather. One-off
The BuildA site that doesn't exist yet Up to five pages, loads fast on a phone on a bad connection, and set up properly in search. No platform underneath it, so there's no monthly fee other than hosting. You own it, and I can show you how to edit it yourself if you want. Fixed
The ChangesFix or modify an existing site The sites I build have no plugins to patch and no frameworks to keep current, so there's nothing to pay a monthly fee for. When you want something changed or added, I bill the hours it takes. Hourly

The alternative is a template someone else also bought, at about $23 a month forever, with a help desk instead of a person. That's $1,380 over five years, and none of it is yours at the end.

STOP 04

Ground covered

A sampling of my client work: sites built, systems untangled, and a few problems that turned out not to be the actual problem. Not a comprehensive list.

  • The Crow and Moon Enchantments homepage Crow and Moon Enchantments Full Build · 2026 · Eleventy A storefront for a maker who sells in person and needed somewhere to point people afterwards. No CMS to maintain; she can edit much of the content herself.
  • The Joel Baker Counseling homepage Joel Baker Counseling Full Build · 2025 · Eleventy A brochure website for a counseling practice. Built to spec.
  • The Clean Air homepage Clean Air Survey + Custom coding · 2025 · WordPress A company providing air quality testing and consulting services. Pre-existing WordPress website that needed patching, built custom 3rd party integrations, codebase cleanup and multiple bug fixes.
  • The ND Hub forum homepage NDHub.io Full Build · 2026 · Discourse Forum An online community for people who are neuro-divergent.

STOP 05

End of the route

Code Less Traveled closed in 2026. The page is kept here as it was built, because the design deserved better than a lapsed domain. The work carries on under my own name.

bendoylegray.com/the-work

Designed and built by Ben Doyle Gray.