Handing your website to someone you've just met is a fair thing to be nervous about. So here's the whole thing, start to finish. Your current site stays up while I build, nothing moves until you say go, and at the end it's all yours.
That last row is the one that matters. After handoff I'm a guest in your account, and you can show me the door any time you like.
I build the new site from scratch, somewhere else entirely. Your current one keeps running exactly as it is — same address, same content, no downtime, no "under construction" page. Nobody visiting will notice a thing.
There's no nervous moment at the start of a project. Your old site just gets left alone.
When it's ready I send you a private link. Not a mockup — the real, working site, on your laptop and on your phone. Send it to your board, your staff, your most opinionated volunteer.
Tell me what to change and I'll change it, as many times as it takes. Nothing at your real address moves until you're happy.
Your site needs somewhere to live. I use a service called Vercel for that — think of it as the plot of land, and your website as the building.
You make a free Vercel account in your organization's name. Use an email your team controls: a shared one like info@ beats somebody's personal inbox, so access doesn't walk out the door when they do.
It's yours from minute one this way. No stage where your website sits in an account you can't log into, and one less thing to hand over later.
Once you've approved the site, I move the project out of my account and into yours. You get a request, you click accept, done. From that moment it's yours — not as a promise, just as a fact of where the account sits.
The source code comes with it. If you ever want a different designer, or want to bring it in-house, none of that has to go through me.
Your domain — yourcharity.org — stays exactly where it is, in your name, with whoever you already pay for it. That doesn't change at any point.
To point it at the new site, someone on your team signs in and changes two settings. I'll give you the exact values to type and stay on the call while you do it. Your team drives, I navigate.
There's a faster way to connect a domain that hands your whole domain setup to the host. I don't use it, because it's the most common way a launch accidentally takes down an organization's email. We change the two settings that point the web address, and nothing else.
The change takes a little while to spread across the internet — usually minutes, occasionally a few hours. Then your address shows the new site instead of the old one.
Before either of us calls it done:
Your old site isn't deleted the moment we launch. We keep it, and agree how to switch back before we start. Going live is a decision you can undo.
Two ways to carry on, and I'm genuinely happy with either.
You own the project, the code and the domain, and you run it yourself. I'll leave notes on how to make the usual changes. You don't owe me anything, including staying in touch.
You invite me into your account and I help with updates as things change. You still own everything — I just have permission to help, and you can take it back whenever.
If design4van vanished tomorrow, you'd still have the project, the code and the domain, and your site would carry on exactly as it is.
Nope. It stays in your organization's name, with whoever you already buy it from, the whole way through. I don't own it and I don't need to.
No — and please don't. Not to me, not to anyone, and never over email. Your team makes the sensitive changes while I talk you through exactly what to click.
No. The new site is built somewhere else entirely, at a temporary address only we know about. Your live site carries on untouched until you've approved the replacement.
You do — the project, the source code and the domain. You're not renting it or licensing it from me. It's yours outright.
Nothing happens to your website. It's all already in your accounts, so there's nothing of yours for me to take with me. Any designer you bring in later can pick up the code and carry on.
Probably not. These sites are small and static — plain pages, no database — which is exactly what Vercel's free tier is built for. This site runs that way. I'll show you what your project actually uses before I hand it over, and nobody gets signed up for anything. You'll carry on paying your usual domain fee to whoever you already buy it from.
Yes, if you'd like. You invite me in as a collaborator and I help with updates. Completely optional, changes nothing about who owns what, and it's not a condition of me building the site.
Yes, any time, from your own settings, without telling me why. The site keeps working exactly the same. No hard feelings either — that's how it's meant to work.
It's less than it looks. Most of it is me doing things and you clicking approve. Ask me anything before you commit to a single thing.
Email me a question →