0 → launch
GREENFIELD · LCP 0.6 s · LIGHTHOUSE 100 · A11Y 100 · 28-DAY ENGAGEMENT
Steldy is a product brand preparing to launch. It needed a marketing site that is fast, distinctive, and — critically — runnable by a small non-technical team without a developer on call. Over 28 days I built it green-field on hand-crafted Gutenberg blocks with a tokenised design system, SEO and structured data in place before launch.
- Client
- Steldy
- Vertical
- SaaS · Product
- Year
- Q1 2026
- Role
- Lead
- Duration
- 28 days
- Status
- ● Launching soon
Loom walkthrough
Screen plates · Gallery
Placeholders shown — production screenshots replace these on the live build. Arrow keys navigate; Esc closes.
Problem
Steldy came to me before launch, which is the right time and the rare one. The brief: a marketing site that looks nothing like a template, loads in well under a second, and — the part most pre-launch sites get wrong — can be edited and extended by a small team with no developer. Too many founders ship a fast site that calcifies the moment they need to change it.
It needed a distinctive, tokenised design system expressed as reusable blocks, performance and accessibility built in from the first commit, and SEO and structured data ready so launch day is an on-switch, not a scramble.
- ▲ Greenfield · pre-launch
- ▲ No brand system yet
- ▲ Must be team-editable, no dev
- ▲ SEO + schema before launch
- ▲ WCAG 2.2 AA from day one
Constraints
Decisions
Green-field WordPress with a block design system.
Alternative considered: a static-site generator. Rejected because: the team needs to edit copy and add pages themselves, daily. Tradeoff: a static build edges it on raw output — but WordPress + tuned blocks hits 0.6s and stays editable.
Fully tokenised design — no hardcoded values.
Alternative: bespoke CSS per section. Rejected because: the brand will evolve and must stay consistent as it does. Tradeoff: more setup up front — repaid by a brand that can be re-themed from a handful of tokens.
SEO and structured data before launch, not after.
Alternative: launch, then add SEO. Rejected because: the first crawl is the cheapest one to get right. Tradeoff: none worth naming — schema, metadata, and a clean sitemap shipped with the build.
Build
Stack
- ▸ WordPress 6.7 + Gutenberg block API
- ▸ Tokenised design system · CSS custom properties
- ▸ ACF Pro · block field definitions only
- ▸ Structured data + metadata · pre-launch
- ▸ Cloudflare · cache + image resize
- ▸ WCAG 2.2 AA tested via axe + NVDA + keyboard
Plugins · greenfield · 7
- ✓ kept ACF Pro · tokenised design system · Yoast SEO + schema · Wordfence · Cloudflare · WPForms
- × removed No legacy stack — green-field. Avoided: page builder, hardcoded styling, marketing-tracker sprawl, render-blocking web fonts
Results · Measured
These are pre-launch lab figures, dated and labelled as such. Field data will be published once the site is live. Nothing here is presented as production traffic it has not yet seen.
Tradeoffs
These are lab numbers, not field numbers — the site is launching soon, so real-user Core Web Vitals do not exist yet. I would rather say that plainly than dress a pre-launch build in production metrics. Field data will replace these figures after launch.
AI usage · This project
Claude and Cursor scaffolded the block field groups and the design-token scaffolding. Every block, the token system, and all accessibility work were hand-written and reviewed. The brand and copy decisions were the client’s and human; AI wrote none of the site copy.
Read the full AI policy ↗.
- Scaffold
- Claude · Cursor
- Refactor
- Human
- A11y
- Human · NVDA
- Copy
- Client + human
- Architecture
- Human
- QA
- Human
Testimony · Verified
"Pixy built our site before launch the way it should be done — it loads in half a second, looks like nobody else’s, and my team can edit every word of it without calling a developer. The whole thing runs off a design system, so as the brand grows the site grows with it."
- Name
- Lena Storm
- Role
- Founder
- Company
- Steldy
- Project
- 2026 launch build
- Verified via
- steldy.com