Hi, I'm Josh Withers.

I've been saying nice things for a living since 1996 — and building websites for just as long. I started with WordPress in 2003 and spent the next two decades making hundreds of sites on it. In 2024, I saw the light. I moved to Astro and static websites, and I'm not going back.

Before web development became my focus, I spent 17 years as one of Australia's busiest wedding celebrants. Over 1,000 weddings and 1,200 elopements across 23 countries. That experience is why I'm one of the few web developers who can build wedding industry websites with genuine insider knowledge. Before that, I was a radio host. All of it taught me the same thing: if people can't find you, nothing else matters. That experience is why I build websites the way I do now — I've lived the problem I'm solving.

Along the way I co-founded the Elopement Collective with my wife Britt, co-created the Celebrant Institute which has mentored over 10,000 celebrants globally, and have been featured in The New York Times and The Today Show. I'm a lifetime member of the International Association of Professional Wedding Officiants. I've been in small business full-time since 2013 and I understand what small businesses actually need because I've been one for over a decade.

I build websites for three audiences

Every website I build is designed for three groups. First, the humans using it — the site loads in under a second, works on any device, has no layout shift, no pop-ups, no friction. Second, the business paying for it — hosting is free or near-free, there's no database to maintain, no CMS subscription, no security vulnerabilities. Third, the computers deciding whether to recommend it — search engines and AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

That third audience is where most web developers stop thinking. I don't. Every site I build targets 100/100/100/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights. Every site includes comprehensive schema markup, XML sitemaps, properly configured robots.txt, and an llms.txt file so AI systems can read and recommend your business. The technical foundations that make a website rank aren't optional extras — they're how I build.

From WordPress to static

After nearly 20 years of WordPress, I know it inside out — the good, the bad, and the 2am plugin updates. I switched to Astro because static sites are objectively better for the businesses I serve: faster, more secure, cheaper to run, and easier for search engines and AI to read.

Astro generates pure HTML and ships zero JavaScript unless absolutely needed. A static site on Cloudflare Pages handles a million visitors for the same cost as ten: $0. Compare that to managed WordPress hosting at $50–$200/month with traffic limits. Static sites don't just perform better — they fundamentally change the economics of running a website.

Based in Tasmania, working everywhere

I live on two acres in Tasmania's Huon Valley, just outside Hobart, with my wife Britt and our three kids. It's quiet, it's beautiful, and the internet works fine. When I'm not building websites I'm perfecting lawn stripes, photographing the Aurora Australis, or catching a Foo Fighters show somewhere in the world.

I have clients across Australia, Canada, and the USA. The internet doesn't have borders, and neither does my work. I specialise in small businesses because that's what I know — tight budgets, the need for things that just work, and the frustration of paying an agency thousands of dollars for a slow website that doesn't rank. I take clients directly and build for SEO and marketing agencies who need a specialist static site builder on their team.

If you want a website that's fast for your customers, cheap to run, and visible to every search engine and AI assistant on the internet — let's talk.