What does hand-coded mean?
Every page is written by hand in plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no WordPress, no page builder, no plugin stack. Nothing stands between your content and the code that renders it.
One person, whole studio
About
The Better Website is a one-person studio. I design it, I build it, and I'm the one you'll actually talk to.
Who's building this
The
story.
Who's building this
The story
I'm Adam Hoidahl, a designer/developer who spent years doing ADA compliance and WordPress work before deciding both problems shared the same fix: stop building sites out of software you don't fully control. No page builder, no plugin stack, no platform sitting between you and your own content — just markup I write myself, on purpose.
How I build
Every page on this site is hand-coded, and every build I take on is too — not built on a CMS, a template or a page builder. Each one starts as an empty file and gets only what it earns, which is the whole method. That includes the motion: this site scrolljacks, on purpose, and does it the way I think it should be done — keyboard-friendly, screen-reader-friendly, and completely normal for anyone who'd rather it not move at all. If any of that sounds interesting, the hand-coded case and whether scrolljacking is bad for accessibility go into the how and why. The clients who get the most out of a scroll-driven site are the ones with something to say — architecture practices, art studios, travel companies, venues, and any business whose work is a story or a statement rather than a catalogue. Their arguments are already sequential, which is exactly what this way of building is good at. It is usually also why the design ends up minimalist: when the work supplies the colour, the site's job is to stay out of its way.
Where this came from
The Better Website started as a WordPress agency site I was done with. The replacement had one job beyond replacing it: the site itself had to be the pitch. The motion came from a CodePen demo I admired and rebuilt from scratch, spread across a real, five-page site instead of one. The full case study has the whole story — what I set out to build, what broke, and what shipped.
Built By HandFAQs
Why not just use WordPress?
WordPress makes a CMS and a plugin stack the whole system, sitting between you and your visitors — more to break, get hacked, or slow down. A hand-coded site isn't built on that. If a job needs a CMS it goes in as one part, not the platform. The hand-coded case post has the reasoning.
Can I update my own content after launch?
Yes — how you update your site is decided with you rather than fixed in advance. Some clients want to post their own updates; others would rather send them over and have them handled. We settle that early, and it is scoped like everything else about the build.
Will my site be fast?
Hand-coded sites aren't built on a CMS, so nothing slows the page down but the page itself — fast loads, high Core Web Vitals scores, a lighter footprint than a typical plugin-heavy WordPress build.
Is it harder to maintain than WordPress?
It's actually easier — a site that isn't built on a CMS has no core, plugin stack or theme to keep updated, and no security patches to chase. Fewer dependencies means fewer things that can break on their own.
Do you build the whole site yourself?
Yes — design and code both, start to finish. The Better Website is a one-person studio; whoever you talk to about your project is the person who builds it.
Twenty-four more answers
Still
curious?
That's me — no agency behind the curtain, no account manager, no quiet handoff to a junior. You get the person who wrote the code. Here's how I build, what I've built, and why I keep writing about it. The FAQ is the short version of everything I get asked and home is the long one. Read enough and want to start something? Reach me here. Or keep scrolling — the questions are next.
Adam Hoidahl The Better Website
The Better Website is a one-person web design studio in Raleigh, NC, serving the Triangle and clients nationwide. Adam Hoidahl hand-codes every site in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript — not built on WordPress, a page builder or a CMS.
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