Forged, not assembled · Vienna, MO

Websites built to sell, not just sit there.

Every site I make is written by hand. No WordPress, no templates, no piles of plugins, and no platform charging you rent to use your own site. Your only monthly bill is real hosting, and the site is yours to take in house whenever you want.

Get a free site audit See the work ›

+ I'll find one specific thing on your site that's costing you customers. No pitch, just findings.

jimmy@jjsforge: ~
In production, owned outright
Ares Custom Rifles TrooNow MyAcademy LeadAudit Pro
Work

Real businesses. Real code. All in production.

These are sites and platforms I built from the ground up for owners who needed software that mainstream tools could not give them. Every one runs live today, and every one is owned outright by the person who paid for it.

Flagship platform
Central Missouri Trailers
Built on DealerDash Pro, a JJS Forge product

A complete dealership platform for a family owned trailer and equipment business right here in Vienna. Live inventory for trailers and equipment, online financing applications, a parts and merch store with checkout, service booking, and customer accounts. One system runs the whole lot. This is the most involved kind of build I take on, a full operating platform rather than a website, and it is priced and supported to match.

View live
Inventory systemOnline financingStore and bookingCustom checkout
Live
full inventory, online and current
1
platform for sales, parts, and service
100%
owned by the dealer
Ares Custom Rifles View live

Custom ecommerce for a precision rifle maker in a category the big platforms flatly refuse to serve. Full FFL checkout, serialized inventory, an age gate, and a quote system buyers drive themselves. It runs on its own stack, so no outside platform can ever switch it off.

FastAPIRailwayCustom checkout
TrooNow View live

A multitenant platform for food trucks and restaurants. Every owner gets their own ordering site, POS, kitchen display, catering, loyalty, and accounting under their own subdomain. Custom payment handling, running live in production.

FastAPIMultitenantCustom payments
MyAcademy View live

An AI homework helper for students from K through college. It teaches the steps instead of handing over the answer, with dashboards for parents and teachers, ten subjects, and photo upload for solving problems. Over 70 routes and more than 30,000 lines of code.

Next.jsPostgreSQLCustom AI engine
LeadAudit Pro View live

Lead generation and SEO audit software. Free tools for site audits, core web vitals, SERP previews, and Google Business Profile checks, with clear upgrade paths to paid plans. More than 200 endpoints and paying customers in production.

FastAPISEO toolingCustom payments
Dutch Maid Donut View live

A handmade donut food truck running on TrooNow, my multitenant platform. A custom branded storefront with online ordering, preorders, and a live map that shows customers where the truck is parked right now. Designed and themed by hand, live across central Missouri.

Food truckOnline orderingBuilt on TrooNow

Your business here. I take on two or three new builds a quarter. If you have a real business with real customers and a site that isn't pulling its weight, let's talk.

Start with a free audit
Get educated

Know what you are actually buying.

Almost every business around here is sold one of three things and told it is a website: a drag and drop builder, an AI site generator, or a theme stacked with plugins. They look fine in the demo. Here is what each one really is, and where a site written by hand is different.

Compare
The usual optionsWordPress · Wix · Squarespace · GoDaddy · Durable · Lovable
JJS ForgeHand coded from scratch
Who builds it
The platform, a template, or an AI generator. The shop picks options from a menu.
Me. Every line written for your business, by a person you can call.
How far it bends
As far as the template or platform allows. Past that, the answer is it cannot do that.
All the way. It is code, so there is no menu to run out of.
Selling, booking, ordering
Usually bolted on. You send customers off to a separate store or booking link.
Built into the one site, under your name, from the first click to checkout.
Can AI and Google read it
Often not. Many builder sites are JavaScript only and render as a blank page to crawlers.
Plain server rendered HTML a machine can read on day one. Included, never an add on.
If you stop paying
The site goes dark and you walk away with nothing. You were renting it the whole time.
You keep the code and the content no matter what. The monthly is just hosting, so you can move the site to your own hosting with a one time handoff, never locked out of what you paid for.
Who owns it
The platform owns the build. You keep the domain name.
You do. The code and the content are yours outright.

01One site, not five.

The builder gets you a homepage, then sends your customer somewhere else to actually buy, book, or order. A store on one platform, a booking link on another, an ordering page on a third. Every jump is a chance to lose the sale, and none of those pieces are really yours. I build the store, the booking, the ordering, and the accounts into the one site under your brand, so the customer never has to leave to give you money.

02About that AI visibility bill.

You will see shops charging around $600 a month to get you found by AI. Here is the part they skip: nobody can promise what ChatGPT or Google's AI will recommend, so the promise cannot be checked. What can be checked is whether those tools can read your site at all, and many builder made sites show up as a blank page to them. The real first step is plain, server rendered HTML, which is just how a site should be built. It is in every build here, not a monthly line item. See how AI visibility actually works.

Own it or rent it

Buy it once, or rent it forever?

A lot of shops around here sell a website like a phone plan: a few hundred to start, then a fee every single month that never ends. Stop paying and the site goes dark, because you never owned it. Slide through the real local rates and watch what renting actually costs.

A typical local rent your website rate
3 years
What other shops charge to rent
$15,300
$900 to start, then $400 a month for 36 months
  • The fee never ends, year after year
  • You own nothing, ever
  • Stop paying and the site disappears
  • The price climbs for the SEO that actually works
Owning it with JJS Forge
One build, then just hosting. After it pays off, every month you are money ahead.
  • A one time build, then simple hosting, not rent
  • The code and the content are yours, outright
  • Cheaper than renting before long
  • Your price lands in the proposal I email you

Heads up: the dollar figures above are the kind of rates other shops around here charge to rent you a website, not my prices. What a custom build costs depends on what your site needs to do, and that number only ever lives in the proposal I email you. Slide the rates to match a quote you have seen and compare it against owning.

At a typical rent your website rate, renting runs past $15,000 over three years and you still own nothing. A custom build pays for itself against that, and after it does, the site is yours and the money stays in your pocket.

See what owning yours would cost
Getting found

Search is part of the build, not a bill that never ends.

A site nobody can find is not finished. So getting you in front of customers, on Google, in the map pack, and in the AI tools people now ask for recommendations, is wired into every build. It is the job done right, not a monthly upsell.

01

Local SEO

Schema markup, your Google Business Profile set up properly, and real location pages so you turn up when someone nearby searches for what you do.

In every build
02

Technical SEO

Fast load times, clean server rendered HTML, proper titles and tags, and a site Google can crawl fully on the first pass. The plumbing most builders get wrong.

In every build
03

AI search ready

Pages a machine can actually read, so ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity can find and cite your business instead of skipping a page they cannot load.

In every build
See how AI visibility works GEO and AEO done right, with no magic ranking promises.
How it works

One custom site, built to fit your business.

No menu of packages to decode. There is one thing I do: build you a custom site from scratch, sized and priced to exactly what you need. We sort the details out when you get a quote. You own it when it is done, and hosting stays a simple flat monthly. Build your quote.

What every build includes

  • Written by hand, never WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or an AI site generator
  • Mobile first, fast, and built to turn visitors into customers
  • Sized to your business, a focused site or a large one
  • Whatever it needs to do, all in one site: payments, booking, ordering, logins, integrations
  • Lead capture wired straight to your inbox
  • Local SEO and machine readable HTML built in, never a paid add on
  • You own the code and the content outright
  • Optional ongoing care, sized to your build: managed hosting, updates, backups, and monitoring
Build your quote

Bigger project, a custom integration, or something nobody else around here will take on? Get in touch and we will scope it together.

Process

Four steps. No agency runaround.

No account managers, no handoffs, no waiting a week for a reply. You work with the person writing your code, start to finish.

01

You book a quick call

We talk through what your site needs to do, what is in your way, and what fits. No deck, no pressure.

02

I send a fixed price proposal

Within 48 hours. One page. What is in, what is out, when it ships, and what it costs. Sign it or do not.

03

I build it

You see updates every few days and give feedback in plain English. I revise. We ship when it is right.

04

You own it

The code and content are yours. I host and manage it for a simple monthly, or hand you the keys to run yourself.

About

Who is actually building this.

I am Jimmy. I build custom websites for owner run businesses out of Vienna, Missouri.

My background is custom development for businesses the big platforms will not touch. The major hosts and payment companies all ban firearms, so I built a clean store for a custom rifle maker that works around every one of them. That is the work I like. A specific problem, a real owner, something that pays for itself.

Most small business sites are bad because the shop that built them treated it like a brochure and walked away. I treat your site like a piece of equipment. It has to work, it has to be maintained, and it has to make you money.

You work with me directly, and you are never locked in. You own the code and content outright, so unlike a rented platform, no one can ever shut you out of what you paid for. That ownership is your protection. The monthly is a different thing and worth having on its own: a real person who knows your business, keeps the site fast, secure, and current, and actually answers the phone.

If you have a real business with real customers and you are tired of a site that does nothing for you, we should talk.

Vienna, MO Building since 2023 No templates, ever
jimmy@jjsforge: ~
$ whoami Jimmy. Builder. Owner operator. $ ls projects/ dealer_os/ ffl_store/ food_trucks/ tutoring/ seo_tools/ yours/ $ cat approach.txt Specific problem. Real owner. Built to pay for itself. $ uptime since 2023, still answering my own email $
FAQ

Questions worth asking.

Everyone around here uses WordPress and it seems fine

WordPress will put a site on a screen, but fine usually just means nobody has measured it. Most local WordPress sites are slow on a phone, buried past page one of Google, and wearing the same theme as two competitors in town. And everyone uses it is the problem, not the proof: it is the single biggest target for automated attacks because so many sites are identical. Yours should be built to win customers, not just exist.

Why not Wix, Squarespace, or an AI site builder

Those are fine for a hobby page. For a business that needs to show up on Google, load fast, and stay secure, they fight you. They lock your content inside their platform and charge rent every month forever, and many of them render as a blank page to Google and AI tools. I write your site by hand: lean code, no plugin sprawl, nothing holding it hostage.

Is a custom site really more secure

Yes, and it is not close. A custom site has no plugin ecosystem, no public admin login for bots to hammer all day, and a tiny attack surface. I keep dependencies minimal and patched, and your site sits behind real security headers and HTTPS from day one. Fewer moving parts means fewer ways in.

What about ADA and accessibility

It is built in, not bolted on afterward. Semantic HTML, proper color contrast, keyboard friendly navigation, labeled forms, and a text description on every image, built toward WCAG standards. It lowers your legal exposure, and it is simply the right thing to do for customers who would otherwise be shut out of your business.

Do I really own the site

Yes. The code and the content are yours from the day you pay for the build, in writing. A live site still has to be hosted, patched, backed up, and kept secure, and that is what the simple monthly covers, the work of running it, never permission to use your own site. Want to take it in house instead? You can, you are never locked in, that is the whole point of owning it. Moving a live site is a serious piece of work, not a button, so it is handled as a one time handoff and treated like the migration it is: I export the full codebase, stand up production hosting on your own account, move the database over cleanly, transfer the domain, SSL, backups, and monitoring, hand you every credential and a written set of docs, then walk your team through running, updating, and deploying it themselves. It is a complete migration, done right the first time so nothing breaks, priced to the work and agreed in writing before any of it starts. From that day forward the server bills, security patches, backups, and the late night outage calls are yours. Most owners run the numbers and decide keeping me on is the easier, cheaper deal.

Do I have to buy SEO or AI visibility as an add on

No, and be careful with anyone who says yes. Basic SEO, your title tags, schema, fast load, crawlable pages, and Google Business Profile, is part of building a site correctly, not a separate product. It is included in every build here. AI visibility packages sell you on the same idea, but nobody can promise what a chatbot will recommend. What can be checked is whether AI can read your site at all, and plain server rendered HTML is how I build everything.

How long does it take

Most builds ship in two to three weeks. Need it faster? A rush timeline is possible and shows up as a line in your quote.

What if I need changes after launch

Email me, small tweaks are quick. Want ongoing updates, security monitoring, and a monthly check in? A care plan covers it. Either way, you are never locked in.

Let's talk

Need a new site, or is your current one costing you customers?

Drop your website in below and I will find one specific thing that is costing you customers, free. No pitch, no obligation. Starting from scratch instead? Tell me that and we will talk about a build.