I'm Donovan Crader — a web developer in San Diego. I build, launch, and maintain real websites for real businesses: bringing in new customers, taking payments and bookings, and saving you hours every week. Live sites for live clients — not portfolio demos.
Free 30-minute call. No pitch, no obligation.
About
I've spent years building websites that have to actually work — websites that have to bring in customers, take payments, schedule appointments, and not break at 2 a.m. when no one's around to fix them.
I work best with owners who want a quick conversation, a fair price, and a finished site that does what they hoped it would. No tech jargon. No mystery invoices. No "I'll have to check with the developer" — I am the developer.
Every site I build is a working part of a real business — bringing in customers, taking payments, scheduling appointments, answering questions. Not a demo, not a coming-soon page.
Every site I ship is checked to work for people on a phone, on a slow connection, using a screen reader, or just unfamiliar with the web. Your customers shouldn't need to be tech-savvy to do business with you — and it protects you from the rising tide of ADA lawsuits.
I design, build, deploy, and maintain. When something breaks, you call one number. When you want a change, one person makes it. No subcontractors, no team turnover, no “I'll have to check with the developer.”
Selected work
A live local business, a complete blogging platform, a real-time multiplayer game, and an AI-driven publishing system.
Home — bringing in new customers
A live, working website for a busy San Diego dog daycare.
I built and run thedoglodgesd.com, the website for The Dog Lodge — a busy San Diego dog daycare. The site brings in new customers from Google, lets parents book stays and pay online, and gives the owner a dashboard to manage every dog in their care. It's been live and serving real customers since launch.
Home — warm, appetizing, fast
A modern recipe site built to scale.
A complete recipe website with hundreds of dishes, smart navigation, beautiful photography on every page, and a personalized home feed that adapts to the time of day. Built to handle thousands of recipes, ranked search across ingredients and tags, and a tidy email-newsletter funnel. Designed and built end-to-end.
Reading a story
A complete blogging platform, built from the ground up.
A complete blogging platform. Writers sign up, publish stories with photos, follow other writers, leave comments, and search by topic. The kind of site Medium and Substack are built on — a working demonstration that small businesses can have a real publication, not a one-off blog template.
A live six-player table
A live multiplayer site you can play with friends in your browser.
Online blackjack where up to six friends play at the same table — placing bets, splitting hands, chatting — all happening live, in their browsers. It's here because it's the hardest kind of website to build: every player has to see what every other player is doing instantly. If a site can be built to handle this, it can be built to handle whatever your business needs.
More projects in progress — restaurants, cafés, real estate, more local businesses. Have a project to add to this page?
Pricing
I quote a fixed price for the work we agree on. If something changes mid-project, we talk about it before any meter starts.
~1 week
A polished website for businesses that need to look credible online — quickly.
3 – 4 weeks
A real product website that actually works for your business day to day.
6+ weeks
A custom platform — admin tools, customer logins, AI features, anything specific to how your business works.
Nonprofit? Mention it — every quote includes a built-in discount for 501(c)(3) work.
How we work
No mystery hours, no scope creep, no "let's circle back."
You describe the problem. I tell you whether I can help, what tier it fits, and roughly how long it will take.
I send you a one-page scope and a fixed price. You approve it before any code is written.
I share a staging link in week one and update it weekly. You see the site take shape in real time.
We launch when you're ready. I handle deploy, DNS, and email setup, then stay on for a month of free polish.
Let's build
Tell me about it — what you're trying to build, who it's for, and roughly when you'd want it live. I'll come back within a day with whether I can help and what it would cost.
