The build starts with a plan, not with code. Then it runs phase by phase on a staging site you can open, with each phase proven before the next one starts. Nothing reaches your live domain until the delivery step.
What is in the plan?
Five parts. The files that change. The order of work. The risks. The proof: what we will measure, as a visitor, to call each phase done. And the rollback: what reverts each change, who runs it, and how we would know it had reverted. The test of a plan is that someone who was not in any of our conversations could build from it alone.
The first phase is always the publishing pipeline. The site can be deployed before it has a single page, so that publishing is a thing that has worked twenty times by launch day rather than a surprise at the end. Richard says “go” once the plan has been reviewed and any risks are named in it rather than hidden.
What is a staging site?
A private copy of your site, at its own address, where the work happens. It is kept out of search engines and it is yours to open from the first phase onward. You see the site grow section by section rather than receiving it finished. If something looks wrong, you say so at the phase it appeared, which is the cheap moment.
What does “proven before the next phase” mean?
Each phase has a proof line in the plan: a measurement taken on the rendered staging site as a visitor would see it, not a glance at the code. Speed on a phone. A form arriving where it should. A page reading correctly with a keyboard. The phase is done when its proof passes, and not before.
If a phase turns up something that makes the plan wrong, we go back to the plan and fix it there. We do not patch forward in code and hope. A plan that says one thing while the site does another is worse than no plan.
Who checks the code?
Before any phase is called done, the code goes through a review by a second set of eyes, separate from whoever wrote it. It checks the things you will not see and would feel: every value comes from the locked kit; the site owns its own files rather than borrowing them from another domain; anything that changes something about you is done safely; every public page carries what search engines and AI assistants need before it goes anywhere.
Each deploy is also committed to version control, so any phase can be put back exactly as it was.
What can you do during the build?
Open the staging site as often as you like and tell us what you see. Ask questions. Send the content you promised. What we ask in return is that new ideas go on the list rather than into the phase in progress, so the plan stays true and the site arrives when we said.