John StanifordCover01 / 12

Paak^®

John
Staniford

DocumentWebsite, rebuilt around the work

Prepared forJohn Staniford
Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand

Prepared byTJ Pak
Paak®, paak.works

Dated19 August 2026
Valid 30 days

John StanifordContents02 / 12

Contents

What’s in here, in order.

What this is forWhere the current site is letting the paintings down.03
What I’d buildA gallery you run yourself, and what it’s built on.04
What’s in itEverything the money covers, in plain English.05
The moneyTwo options, and what each one buys.08

06How it runs
07What I need from you
09After launch
10The rules
11Recent work
12Next

John StanifordWhat this is for03 / 12

What this is for

The paintings are the best thing on the site. They’re also the hardest thing to see.

Everything below I checked on the live site on 19 August, on a phone, not guessed at.

147Paintings sitting on two pages, with no way to search, sort or filter them.

13MBDownloaded on a phone just to open Gallery 1 once. That’s about 20 camera photos’ worth of data.

36Phone screens of scrolling to reach the bottom of one gallery page.

0Pages where a single painting gets its own story, its size, and a button to enquire.

None of this is a knock on the work. You’ve been painting, not building websites, and that’s the right order. The site just hasn’t kept up with what’s in it.

Three things are holding it back.

It’s heavy. All 70 images on Gallery 1 load at once, at full size. Nothing waits until you scroll to it. On rural or mobile data, people leave before the paintings appear.
Every painting is a dead end. Tapping one opens a bigger picture and nothing else. No title, medium, size, year or story. No way to say “I want this one” without leaving the gallery, finding Contact, and typing out which painting they meant.
You can’t drive it. It’s WordPress with a page-builder plugin on top, and hosting sits with a third party. Adding a painting means fighting an editor. Marking one sold means typing “ - SOLD ” into the caption by hand.

So the job is simple to say. Make the website as good as the paintings, and hand you the keys.

John StanifordWhat I’d build04 / 12

What I’d build

A gallery that sells, and a back office you actually enjoy.

Modern, quiet, a bit of movement where it earns it — and never louder than the painting it’s framing. The site’s job is to disappear behind your work.

A real galleryBig images, generous space, loaded as you scroll instead of all at once. Filter by available or sold, by series, by year. It stays fast at 147 paintings and it’ll stay fast at 400.
A page for every paintingFull-screen image you can zoom. Title, year, medium, size. A short paragraph in your words about what it is and where it came from. That paragraph is what turns a browser into a buyer.
Enquire, right thereOne button on the painting’s own page. It already knows which painting. You get an email with the title attached, and they get an instant “got it, John will be in touch” reply.
Price, your callPer painting you choose: show the price, show “price on request”, or show nothing. You can change your mind on any painting, any day, without asking me.
Sold in one tapA switch on each painting. Flick it and the site updates itself — the badge, the filter, the enquiry button. No retyping captions.
Yours to runAdd, edit, reorder, hide, delete. From your laptop or your phone. No developer, no plugin fights.

What it’s built on

SanityYour back office. Drag to reorder, drop in a photo, crop it, flick a switch. Free at your size.

AstroReal code, no page builder. Nothing to break, nothing to update every month.

CloudflareHosting, on the same network the big sites run on. Images resized automatically for whatever screen is asking.

Your domainjohnstaniford.co.nz stays exactly as it is. Nobody has to learn a new address.

John StanifordWhat’s in it05 / 12

What’s in it

Everything the money covers, in plain English.

Before anything is built

Direction session — one hour, you pick the look
Sitemap — what pages exist and what each does
A look at the good ones — how artists who sell well online do it

Your work, moved across

All 147 paintings moved — I do it, not you
Titles and sold status kept, cleaned up as they go
Images re-processed so they’re sharp but light
Old links redirected — nothing anyone has saved breaks

Design and build

Custom design, phone first — not a template
Gallery, painting page, About, Contact
Filters — available, sold, series, year
Enquiry form that names the painting for them
Price on / off / on request, per painting
Sanity set up in your language, not developer language

Before it goes live

Loads in about a second, not thirteen megabytes
Tested on real phones, tablets and browsers
Found on Google — every painting is its own page, so each one can be found by name
Half an hour of training, recorded so you can rewatch it

John StanifordHow it runs06 / 12

How it runs

Two weeks, five steps.

Fourteen days, not fourteen working days. You choose the direction once, in step one. After that we’re building, not re-deciding. That’s the only way a fortnight stays a fortnight.

01
DirectionOne session, about an hour. You pick how it should look and feel.
02
StructurePages, order, and what each one has to do.
03
DesignBuilt to the direction you picked, not a template.
04
BuildReal site, all 147 paintings in, tested on real phones.
05
LaunchLive, fast, and yours — plus the half hour that teaches you to drive it.

John StanifordWhat I need07 / 12

What I need from you

The list that decides whether this ships in two weeks.

Thing	Who	By when
The original image files, if you still have them. Bigger is better — the ones on the site now are small	John	———
Size, medium and year for each painting, as far as you can. A spreadsheet is fine, a photo of a notebook is fine	John	———
Which paintings are actually still available. The site says SOLD in a lot of places — I’d rather start clean	John	———
A few lines on five or six paintings you care about, so I can show you what a painting page reads like	John	———
Whether the work groups into series, and what you’d call them	John	———
A photo or two of you in the studio, if one exists	John	———
Exhibitions, awards, collections — anything that belongs on the About page	John	———
Access to the domain, and the email address enquiries should land in	John	———
All the writing on the site	TJ drafts, you approve	———

If the original files are long gone, say so and we work with what’s on the site. It still looks far better than it does today, because the layout gives each painting room instead of squeezing four into a phone screen. But if you can find the originals, that’s the single biggest jump in quality available, and it costs nothing.

The two weeks run from the deposit. It only slips if this list does. You don’t need everything on day one — the images and the availability list are what I need first, the writing can land while I’m building.

John StanifordThe money08 / 12

The money

Two ways to do it. Both are the full rebuild.

Option 1 · The Gallery

$2,500^{+ GST}

Everything on page 05. The whole site, done properly.

Gallery, painting pages, About, Contact
All 147 paintings moved across
Available / sold filter, price on / off / on request
Enquiry button on every painting
Sanity back office, and the training to use it

Option 2 · The Studio

$3,200^{+ GST}

Option 1, plus the parts that build a following.

Series pages — each body of work gets its own page and its own story
A proper About — studio photos, how you work, exhibitions and collections
Mailing list — people sign up, you email them when new work lands
Richer motion — considered transitions and image reveals, tuned so they never fight the painting
Commissions page — what you take on, what it costs, how it works

Half to start, half the day it goes live. Nothing begins before the deposit lands, and I won’t chase you for the second half until the site is up and you’ve clicked around it. Running costs after launch: Sanity is free at your size, hosting is free at your size, and your domain stays whatever you already pay for it. If you take the care plan on page 09 that’s the only other number.

John StanifordAfter launch09 / 12

After launch

Thirty days on me. Then you choose.

For the first thirty days after launch, small changes are free and unlimited, whichever option you pick below. Email me and it’s done. That’s there so you’re never stuck in the first month, which is the month you’ll have the most questions.

Option A

You run it

No monthly fee to me.

Host it yourself — free at your size, and I set it up in your name
You add and change paintings whenever you like
Every file handed over. You own it outright
After the thirty days, changes are billed by the hour and quoted first

Option B · Recommended

I look after it

$89 + GST a month. Cancel whenever.

Up to an hour of changes a month — new paintings, new photos, new text
You email me instead of learning anything you don’t want to
Daily backups, and a rollback if something breaks
Uptime monitoring, so I find out before you do
Hosting included — included, not the point

You own the site either way. Option B isn’t a lock-in, it’s just me doing the fiddly bits so you can stay in the studio. Either way you can ring me. I’m not going to look after you differently because of $89.

John StanifordThe rules10 / 12

The rules

Set now, so neither of us has to argue about it later.

Timeline: Fourteen days from the deposit — calendar days, not working days — assuming the list on page 07 lands.
Changes: Direction is locked in the first session. Two rounds of changes during the build. Anything past that I’ll quote before I do it.
Ownership: You own the site, the files, the images, the words and the domain. I hold nothing.
After launch: Thirty days of small changes on me. New pages or new features are a separate job.
Not included: Photographing paintings, and any new writing about your practice beyond what we draft together. If the images need re-shooting I’ll tell you honestly rather than quietly work around it.
Copyright: The paintings are yours and stay yours. I put your name on every image file and in the site’s code, so search engines and AI tools credit you.

John StanifordRecent work11 / 12

Recent work

Go and click on them.

Paak®My own studio site. How I work, and everything else I’ve built.paak.works

Acreline ElectricalAuckland electrical contractor. Big imagery, one clear action.victor-contractors-hero.pages.dev

HaroaResidential architecture practice. Closest thing to your job — a portfolio where the work has to carry the page.haroa-demo.pages.dev

Open them on your phone. That’s the test that matters, and it’s the test the current site doesn’t pass.

John StanifordNext12 / 12

Let’s give
the work
some room.

Say go and tell me which option, and I’ll send the deposit invoice. Then we book the direction session this week, and the fourteen days start from there. If anything in here doesn’t sit right, tell me which bit and I’ll change it rather than talk you into it.

Emailtj@paak.works Studiopaak.works BasedAuckland, New Zealand

Paak^® TJ Pak

JohnStaniford