Custom WordPress Development for Detroit Businesses — Architecture First, Templates Last
A senior, lean studio in Rochester Hills, MI building custom themes, post types, and integrations for Metro Detroit companies that have outgrown page builders. You work directly with the people writing the code — SEO-ready architecture is the default, not an upsell.
We've been building custom WordPress sites since 2013 from our Rochester Hills HQ, with recent Detroit-area work across law, orthopedic medicine, B2B staffing, clean energy, and restaurants. If you'd rather pick up the phone, we're at 248-726-0668.
Detroit WordPress Development
When You've Outgrown Templates and Page Builders
Most of the Detroit-area teams that reach out fall into one of three situations.
The first is an operations or marketing lead who inherited a slow, hard-to-maintain WordPress site — or a Squarespace or Wix build that was never going to scale with the content the business actually publishes. The second is a specialty practice owner — a law firm partner, an orthopedic surgeon, a clinic administrator — watching a competitor relaunch with a more authoritative site and start showing up where they used to. The third is a technical evaluator running an RFP for a custom build with real requirements: gated content, portals, integrations, custom post types, a light internal web app. Template shops can't deliver it; enterprise quotes are unreasonable for the scope.
We sit in the senior middle. A lean but mighty team—intentionally small so we can stay hands-on, agile—with big-agency experience and boutique-level attention. Most of the Michigan WordPress sites we audit are page-builder soup: a marketplace theme, thirty plugins doing one thing each, content shoehorned into whatever the page builder allowed. We write custom themes from scratch with proper post types, taxonomies, and ACF or native block patterns mapped to the content the business actually publishes. The site stays fast, stays maintainable, and your in-house team can manage it without filing tickets back to us.
Detroit WordPress Development
What's Standard in an IGNITE WordPress Build
Four things every project gets — not as add-ons, as the baseline.
Custom Theme Architecture
Themes written from scratch with custom post types, taxonomies, and ACF or native block patterns mapped to the content you actually publish. No marketplace theme reskinned, no page-builder lock-in, no plugin-of-the-week stack.
Performance & Core Web Vitals
Image pipeline, asset budgeting, caching strategy, and CDN configured during the build — not bolted on after. We target a Lighthouse score of 90+ at launch and measure it, rather than asserting it in a sales deck.
SEO-Ready Architecture
Clean URL structure, schema markup, internal linking pattern, sitemap, and heading hierarchy built in from day one. Technical SEO foundations are part of the build, so organic growth after launch is a feature of the site, not a separate engagement.
Long-Term Maintainability
A curated plugin stack of 8 to 15 — not 40+. Versioned theme code, a real staging environment, and a documented handoff so your in-house team can manage day-to-day content without waiting on us.
Built in Detroit · You work directly with the senior people writing the code.
Named work, not anonymized case studies
Detroit-Area Work We've Shipped
Recent builds across law, orthopedic medicine, B2B staffing, clean energy, and restaurants — pattern recognition for the verticals that matter in Metro Detroit.
Strobl Sharp PLLC — a Detroit-area law firm with deep practice-area content. The build called for a content architecture that mapped cleanly to attorneys, practice areas, and case work without forcing every page through the same template. Custom post types and taxonomies handle the cross-references; editors don't have to think about them.
MI Orthopedic Specialists — specialty medical site competing against hospital-network and PE-backed firms with bigger marketing budgets. The architecture is built around physicians, conditions, and procedures as discrete content types so the site can grow into long-tail organic visibility without turning into a content-management headache.
Blue Chip Talent — a B2B staffing platform where the content model and integrations matter more than the marketing pages. Custom post types for roles and verticals, structured data where it pays back in search, and an editor experience that doesn't require a developer for routine updates.
LUMA Solar — clean-energy product site in the Michigan industrial space. Performance-sensitive, image-heavy, with product pages that needed to scale as the catalog grew.
Famous Hot Chix — a Detroit-area restaurant brand site where the priority was a fast, on-brand experience that holds up on mobile and converts to orders without friction.
For industrial and manufacturing buyers specifically, here's how we evaluate manufacturing builds — the questions we ask in discovery and the architectural decisions that come out of them.
How a WordPress Engagement Runs
Five phases, an honest 8 to 12 week window for a typical custom build, and direct contact with the people doing the work.
1. Discovery. A working session, not a sales call. We surface the actual content model, the integrations in scope, and — critically — the SEO equity at risk in a redesign. If you're still scoping a redesign, this is where it gets concrete.
2. Architecture. Sitemap, content model (custom post types, taxonomies), wireframes, and a performance budget. By the end of this phase you know exactly what the site will be, not just what it will look like. Where brand work is also in scope, here's our perspective on a branding refresh during a redesign.
3. Build. Custom theme written from scratch in a staging environment that goes live on day one. Weekly demos so there are no late surprises.
4. Migration & QA. SEO equity preservation — redirects, schema, internal linking, heading hierarchy. This is the phase where most agencies lose rankings during a relaunch. We don't.
5. Launch and ongoing. Handoff training for your team, plus an optional support retainer for updates, security, and continued conversion work.
Personal by Design. You won't get passed from department to department. You work with the senior people building the site, start to finish — we don't just launch websites, we build relationships.
Detroit · Custom WordPress Development
Common Questions From Detroit Buyers
Five questions we get on almost every first call.
How much does a custom WordPress build cost in Detroit? Honestly, it's scope-driven. The drivers are page count, integrations, content migration volume, and ongoing support. Detroit-area quotes you'll see range from roughly $2,500 at the template-shop end up past $20,000 for senior custom work. Our numbers land in the senior-custom band — we're not the cheapest line item on the spreadsheet, and we're not an enterprise dev shop either.
How long does a senior custom WordPress build take? 8 to 12 weeks is typical. Tighter scopes can move faster; integration-heavy builds run longer. We'd rather quote the real window than the marketing one.
Who owns the code, hosting, and content after launch? You do. We hand over the theme code, plugin licenses, hosting credentials, and documentation. No platform lock-in, no proprietary builder you can only edit through us.
Can my team manage content after launch without us? Yes — that's the point of building it this way. Custom post types and block patterns are designed for non-technical editors, not developers. If WordPress itself is new to your team, here's a primer on what makes WordPress a strong fit for content teams.
What about ongoing SEO and performance after launch? SEO-ready architecture is built in — schema, internal linking, URL structure that supports search, and performance budgets are part of the launch, not an upsell. For clients who want continued investment, we offer technical SEO foundations and organic SEO after launch as a separate retainer.
Talk to the People Who'd Build It
When you reach out, the call is with a senior IGNITE engineer who'd actually be on the project — not a sales rep handing you off later. Based in Rochester Hills, MI, working with Detroit-area teams. Reach us at 248-726-0668, or read more about custom WordPress development in Michigan.