Websites that show your work at its best

Cheers Digital is a contract web development business based in New Plymouth. I’m Tim Brown, and I build and look after WordPress websites and custom online stores for businesses across Taranaki, from the first conversation through to hosting and maintenance once the site is live.

I also contract to digital agencies in New Zealand and Australia, which means local businesses get the same standard of work agencies pay for, without going through one.

I work across the range of businesses the region has: trades and construction, engineering and energy services, accommodation and tourism operators along the coast and around the mountain, hospitality, retail, and professional services. You’ll find some of that work on this page, from Chad Niwa Building to The Unbaked Bakery.

You deal directly with me, the developer. There’s no account manager and no handover between departments, so enquiries, project discussions and support all come straight to the person doing the work.

Most of my work is contract development for digital agencies in New Zealand and Australia, building sites that go out under their name. Local businesses get that standard of build directly, at a direct rate.

I’m based in New Plymouth and work New Zealand business hours, which matters when something needs sorting the same day rather than waiting for a reply from another timezone. I work with clients across Taranaki and the rest of New Zealand: close enough to meet for a coffee, and set up to work remotely with anyone.

As a guide, landing pages start at $1,750, WordPress websites from $5,000 and online stores from $7,500, plus GST. Every project is different, though, so the final price depends on things like the number of pages, any custom functionality or integrations, and how much content and design work is needed. After an initial conversation you’ll get a written scope and quote, so you know exactly what’s included before anything starts. See pricing

With a conversation about what you need and what’s driving it. From there I’ll put together a written scope covering deliverables, timeline, and cost, so there’s no ambiguity about what’s included. Smaller jobs can skip straight to a quote. For agencies it’s usually more direct, since the brief and designs are already done, and I’ll come back with an estimate and availability.

Yes. If your agency needs extra development capacity, I can work as part of your team, building to your designs and under your brand. That might be theme builds, picking up a project mid-stream, or ongoing maintenance for your clients. You get a scoped brief, direct communication with the developer, and every build handed over properly documented.

The packages cover designing and building your website. A few things sit outside that, because they’re either ongoing services you’re better off owning directly or separate pieces of work: domain names, business email (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365), third-party software subscriptions such as booking or scheduling tools and CRMs, premium plugin licences, integrations beyond the basics, graphic design outside the website (logos, branding, print), copywriting, and stock photography or video. I’m happy to recommend options, set most of these up, or put you in touch with someone who does them well. Anything extra is quoted separately, so there are no surprises.

Yes. I can register or transfer your domain and manage it on your behalf, with DNS through Cloudflare for fast, reliable performance and protection. I can also set up and manage business email through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, including the records that stop your emails landing in spam. Your domain and email accounts are always registered in your name, so you own them, and I take care of the technical side. Setup and management are quoted separately from the website.

Yes. Once the project is paid for, the website, its content and your domain are yours. If you ever move to another developer or host, I’ll hand everything over properly rather than holding it hostage.

It depends on the size of the project and how quickly content comes together, but as a guide: a landing page usually takes one to two weeks, a WordPress website four to six weeks, and an online store six to eight weeks or more. The biggest factor is usually content, so having your text and images ready early is the best way to keep things moving. You’ll get a timeline as part of the written scope before anything starts.

Your logo and any brand guidelines, the text for each page, and the photos you’d like to use. It also helps to share a few websites you like (and why), and access to your domain and any existing website or accounts. Throughout the build I’ll need timely feedback at each review stage. If you don’t have content or photos yet, I can recommend copywriters, photographers or stock image options.

Yes, if you need to. WordPress websites come with an editor set up so you can change text, images and pages without breaking the design, and I’ll walk you through it at handover. For simple sites that rarely change, I may suggest building without a content management system, which keeps them faster and lower maintenance. Either way, you’ll know before the build starts.

I check everything is working as it should once the site is live, make sure search engines can find it, and set up Google Search Console and analytics so you can see how it’s performing. You’ll get a handover covering how to update your site, and a 30-day fix period: if anything from the build isn’t working as it should in that time, I’ll fix it at no cost. From there you can look after the site yourself, or I can host and maintain it on one of the hosting and maintenance plans.

Yes. Common ones are booking and scheduling tools, CRMs, email marketing platforms, payment providers and accounting software like Xero. Simple connections, like embedding a booking widget or a newsletter sign-up form, can usually be included in a website project. Deeper integrations that sync data between systems or automate workflows are custom built rather than bolted on with plugins, so they do exactly what you need without slowing your site down or breaking with updates. These are scoped and quoted separately.

Most stores I build are custom: a fast storefront designed around your products and how you sell, with secure payments through Stripe and a commerce backend added where you need one to manage products, stock and orders. Because it isn’t built on a hosted platform, there are no ongoing platform or app fees adding up each month, and the shopping experience isn’t limited by what a theme allows. If you’d rather manage a large product catalogue in Shopify, I can build a custom storefront on top of it, so you keep Shopify’s admin with a faster, fully custom front end. I’ll recommend the right setup for your products and budget.

Yes. Online stores need work to behave properly for New Zealand customers. That includes Windcave and POLi alongside Stripe, buy now pay later through Afterpay or Laybuy, GST inclusive pricing displayed correctly, rural delivery surcharges, and shipping rates that match what NZ Post or Aramex actually charge. Xero integration for invoicing is a common addition.

Yes. Headless means your content or products are managed in one place, such as WordPress or a dedicated content management system, while the website itself is built separately with a modern framework and pulls that content in. It suits projects that need a faster, more flexible front end than a traditional theme allows, while still giving you an editor you’re comfortable with. Online stores can work the same way, with products and orders managed behind the scenes and a fully custom storefront on top. It’s a more involved build than a standard website, so it’s normally scoped as a custom development project.

Then it’s scoped and priced individually. The packages cover the most common builds, but plenty of projects need more: custom functionality, integrations with other systems, a web app, or a fully custom front end. We’ll talk through what you need, and I’ll put together a written scope covering deliverables, timeline and cost before anything starts.

Managed hosting means I look after the technical side of keeping your website online, fast and secure, so you don’t have to. Instead of buying cheap hosting and managing updates, backups and security yourself, it’s all handled for you, and if something goes wrong, you deal directly with the developer who knows your site.

Both plans include fast hosting on New Zealand or Australian infrastructure, CDN and caching, an SSL certificate, daily offsite backups, uptime monitoring with alerts, and a staging site for testing changes before they go live. WordPress core, theme and plugin updates are applied and checked on a set schedule (monthly on Standard, weekly on Plus) rather than left to auto update and hope. PHP and server software are kept current, and your forms are protected from spam. Plus also includes an hour of my time each month for content edits, new pages and small fixes (unused time rolls over to the next month), and your own analytics dashboard (coming soon), which brings your website traffic, Google Search Console and other connected sources together in one place. You can add the dashboard to Standard for a small monthly fee.

These plans are for WordPress websites. Hosting for other websites is priced separately, based on their server and database needs.

It’s your own online dashboard that brings your website and marketing results together in one place, so you can see how things are going without logging in to several different tools. It connects to Google Analytics, Search Console, Meta, Google Ads and more, showing each month alongside the one before, with past months a click away. It’s included with Plus hosting, or you can add it to Standard for $25 a month plus GST. The dashboard is coming soon. Take a look

It helps, but it isn’t SEO on its own. Fast load times (helped by caching and a CDN), reliable uptime, HTTPS and servers close to your New Zealand visitors all contribute to how search engines rank your site and how long people stay on it. What ranks you for the searches that bring in work is your content, your site’s structure and your Google Business Profile, which are part of how I build websites rather than something hosting can fix.

It’s far better protected than an unmaintained site. Most hacked websites are running out-of-date software, so keeping WordPress, themes and plugins updated does a lot of the work. Add an SSL certificate, uptime monitoring and daily offsite backups, and problems are rare. No website can be guaranteed 100% secure, but if something does go wrong, it’s caught early and your site can be restored from a recent backup.

Your site runs on managed infrastructure in New Zealand or Australia, so the servers themselves, including hardware, networking and operating system security patches, are maintained at the infrastructure level. I look after everything that runs on top: WordPress and plugin updates, keeping the server software your site relies on up to date, SSL certificates, backups and monitoring. Updates that need testing are checked on a staging copy of your site before they go live.

Get in touch and I’ll look at it. Sites on a maintenance plan get priority, and for those I’ll usually have been alerted by monitoring before you notice. For anything else it depends on the day, but being in the same timezone means an urgent issue gets a response in hours rather than waiting for a team elsewhere to come online. Genuinely broken sites, as opposed to change requests, jump the queue.

Yes, and it comes up often, usually when a previous developer is no longer available or a site has fallen out of maintenance. The first step is always an audit: checking the theme setup, plugins, hosting, and any custom code before touching anything, so nothing breaks on handover. From there it’s ongoing maintenance, a rebuild, or targeted fixes, depending on what the site needs.