JoshWebsites
A fast, good-looking site that works on every phone, says what you do and gets people to call. New builds, rebuilds of tired sites, or a WordPress site you can update yourself.
Tech help for local businesses in Perth, Huron and Bruce.
Websites, online booking, custom apps and the back-end pieces that hold them together. Built by someone down the road in Atwood, who answers the phone and explains things in plain English.
Listowel, Stratford, Mitchell, St. Marys, Wingham, Seaforth, Goderich, Exeter, Kincardine, Walkerton and the back roads between.
What people usually call about
- “Our website is ten years old and doesn't work on phones.”
- “Clients keep calling to book. Can they just do it online?”
- “We pay for four apps that each do a quarter of what we need.”
- “I don't know who has the password to our domain.”
- “Can a computer do this spreadsheet job for me every week?”
- “Google shows our old hours and nobody can find us.”
If it plugs in, logs in or lives online, it's probably something I can help with.
What I can do for you
Online booking and payments
Let customers book, pay a deposit or save a card without a phone call. Confirmation emails, reminders, calendar sync and invoices, set up around how you already work.
Custom apps and tools
When off-the-shelf software doesn't fit, I build the thing that does: a web app, an iPhone home-screen app or a Mac app, made for your business and nobody else's.
Back ends, databases and hosting
Client records, logins, file storage and the servers behind them. I lean on low-cost hosting like Cloudflare, so many small sites run for little or nothing a month.
Automation and LLM (AI) helpers
Turn the weekly copy-and-paste job into something that runs itself: drafting posts, sorting files, sending reminders, tidying data. Always with a person checking what matters.
Everyday tech sorting
Domains, business email, Google Business Profile, search basics, backups, who-owns-what. The unglamorous setup that quietly costs you customers when it's wrong.
Things I've built
Real projects, in use or on the way. Each one solved a specific problem for a real person, and most of them are the same kind of thing a local business needs.
Livv: booking, client records and payments for a mobile therapy practice
The MAT Maven travels to clients' homes across Huron and Perth. Livv replaced a patchwork of apps with one system: clients book online and save a card, nothing is charged until after the session, and late cancellations become fees she approves by hand.
- Online booking with Stripe card saving, invoices and Interac e-Transfer requests
- Confirmation and 48-hour reminder emails with calendar invites
- Two-way Google Calendar sync and a private Apple Calendar feed
- Client records with an interactive body map
- Built so a second practice can run on the same code with its own data
React, Cloudflare Workers, D1 database, Stripe, Resend email. Runs on Cloudflare's free plan.
Try the live booking page
Clicks & Castles: a full website rebuild
Our own studio site, rebuilt from the ground up on a safe staging copy before going live. Ten pages for real estate, restaurants, builders, livestreaming and business presence, with a filterable portfolio, Vimeo reels and a booking link on every page.
- Custom design, full-screen photo heroes and a branded photo viewer
- Local SEO: business schema, service-area map, matching Google hours
- A contact form that fills in the right topic from whichever button was pressed
- A scheduled helper that drafts a journal post every second Friday for review
WordPress, Gutenberg, Blocksy, custom PHP and CSS.
Visit clicksandcastles.com
The MAT Maven: a website for a mobile therapy practice
Livv's practice needed a site that explains an unfamiliar therapy in plain words and turns visitors into bookings. It walks people from "what is this?" to "is it for me?" to booking, and every Book a session button goes straight into her Livv booking page.
- Pages for the work, what MAT is, who it's for, about Livv, a journal and FAQs
- Brand built around her logo: deep black, a bold pink and an elegant serif
- Search setup for "MAT therapy" around Huron and Perth, with business schema
- Bookings, client records and payments all land in one place: her Livv dashboard
WordPress, Elementor, Rank Math SEO, connected to Livv.
Visit thematmaven.ca
Virtual Stager: AI image editing that runs on a Mac
Declutter a room, empty it, stage it with new furniture, or turn a daytime exterior into a twilight shot. It runs on our own Mac with open-source AI image models, so client photos never leave the building, and it keeps the full-resolution original sharp by only changing the pixels the AI actually touched.
- Auto-detects furniture and clutter; paint anything else to erase
- An optional check by Claude, an LLM (AI), flags warped windows or floating furniture
- Exports keep the camera data and can add a "Virtually staged" label
Python, FLUX.2 on Apple MLX, LaMa, segmentation models, Claude API.
Case File: a private health journal that spots patterns
Built for people working through gut-health problems with a coach. Each day you tap what you ate, took and did, or just press the button and talk. Over time Case File lines your days up against each other and tells you, with the evidence, what seems to make things better or worse.
- Voice logging: speech recognition runs on the phone itself, and audio is never stored or sent
- Trends, day scores and charts over 30, 60 or 90 days
- Protocols: track a supplement round and see before, during and after
- Insights ranked by strength, each one showing why
- Food nutrition from the USDA database
- Test results stored encrypted behind a passphrase
- Installs from Safari to the home screen and works offline
- A sample-data mode so new users can explore safely
Installable web app (PWA), on-device speech recognition (Moonshine), IndexedDB, hosted free on GitHub Pages.
A Christian meditation app
Thirteen ways of praying handed down over two thousand years, from the desert monks to Brother Lawrence, each one walked through step by step alongside your own Bible. As you learn a practice, the guidance fades from Guided to Cued to By heart, so the app gets out of the way.
- Step-by-step sessions with gentle timers and a bell at the end
- Practices grouped by era, with the teacher and the history behind each
- Scripture shown only when you ask for it, from a public-domain Bible
- A private journal with streaks, kept on your own device
- Feast days and a weekly rule of prayer
- Works offline and installs like a regular app
SvelteKit, installable web app (PWA), on-device storage with backup and restore.
Shown with demo photos.
PhotoSweep: years of Google Photos, untangled
Download your Google Photos and you get a mess: dozens of zip folders, the same photo saved three times, dates and captions split off into separate files. PhotoSweep is a Mac app that reads all of it, matches every photo back to its details, finds the duplicates and sorts everything into tidy folders you can check in Finder.
On its first real run it worked through 73,789 files (397 GB) and found 116 GB taken up by exact duplicates, without deleting a single file.
- Exact duplicates grouped, with a suggested copy to keep and the reason why
- Screenshots, receipts, memes and documents picked out from real photos, with the evidence for every label
- Apple's on-device Vision checks, so no photo ever leaves the Mac
- Safety rules enforced in code: nothing is deleted, copies are verified, every move can be undone
- An audit log of every file operation
SwiftUI Mac app, Python engine, SQLite, Apple Vision.
Back to the Pulpit
A YouTube channel's whole production line. It imports public-domain sermons, rewrites them in modern English with every uncertain spot flagged for review, builds the social posts, transcribes the narration on the Mac, and exports a ready-to-edit DaVinci Resolve timeline. Plus the show's website and a newsletter signup.
Node.js, Claude API, whisper.cpp, a Mac app wrapper, static site.
Find Your Voice
A writing desk for authors with a built-in editor's eye. It reads a manuscript against a library of craft rules (no LLM (AI) needed for that part), then brings in story, voice and line editors one at a time, the way a book is really edited. Imports and exports Word files.
JavaScript, an offline web app, Claude API for the deep reading.
How a project goes
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We talk
Over the phone or at your kitchen table. You tell me what's frustrating; I ask what a good week would look like.
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You see it before it's built
A clickable mockup you can tap through on your own phone, with a clear quote. Nothing gets built until you like it.
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I build it, you try it
On a private test copy first, so nothing you rely on breaks. You test it with real use and we adjust.
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Launch, then I stay around
You own your domain, your data and your accounts. I write down how everything works and I'm a call away when something needs changing.
About me
I'm Josh. For me, this work has always been about supporting folks through technology. By day I fly the drone and edit for Clicks & Castles; the rest of the time I'm usually building something.
I build with Claude, an LLM (AI), as my engineering partner. That's what lets one person in Atwood deliver the kind of booking system, database or app that used to take a software firm. The judgement is mine: what to build, what to leave out, how to keep your data safe and your costs low, and whether the result actually works for the person using it.
I'd rather tell you a $10-a-month app already does what you need than sell you something custom. And when custom is the right answer, I'll build it properly.
What you can count on
- Your data stays yours
- Where I can, things run on your own device or your own accounts. Several of my apps never send a file anywhere.
- Low running costs
- I pick hosting that suits a small business, not a tech company. Livv runs on a free plan.
- Nothing breaks quietly
- Test copies before launch, backups before changes, and undo wherever it's possible.
- Written down
- Every project comes with plain-English notes on how it works and where everything lives.
AI for God
A journal about what LLMs (AI) really are, written for believers, churches and ministries.
An LLM (AI) isn't a mind or a spirit. It's a tool: a very capable pattern-finder, trained on a huge amount of human writing, that predicts what words should come next. Like the printing press, which put Scripture into ordinary hands, it can be put to God's good work, or misused. I write to explain how it works in plain language, so you can decide for yourself how and whether to use it.
First posts coming soon.
What I'll be writing about
- How an LLM (AI) works, without the jargon
- Why it's a tool and not a person, and why that matters
- The printing press, the radio and now this: how the church has used new tools before
- Good uses in ministry: study helps, admin, translation, reaching people
- Where to be careful: truth, privacy, and what should never be handed to a machine
Tell me what you need
A sentence or two is plenty: what your business does and what's getting in the way. I'll get back to you with honest options, including when you don't need me at all.
Based in Atwood, Ontario. Serving Perth, Huron and Bruce counties, in person or remotely.