About Foxfang
From the Owner

Local Website Developer

Hey there - I'm James, the owner of Foxfang Web Design.

Since starting a software career in 2013, I have worked as a web developer, a project manager, and other roles in between. Since 2020, I have freelanced through Foxfang to take these skills to my local community and spend more time with my kids. As a software professional, I believe strongly in the value of human interactions and in the people who create. From designing websites to debugging old applications, I work directly with clients - whether through email, calls, or meetings - to craft technology for the benefit of people.

I noticed that despite the vibrance of the local business community in Meridian, Idaho, the websites for those businesses did not always portray them well. Many websites were outdated. Some didn't even exist. I discovered many small business owners were priced out by the larger web design agencies and did not know who to trust with such a significant project. From my own time in corporate tech, I've seen how small businesses get overlooked by agencies with high overhead, so I have decided to fill that gap and stop good businesses from falling through the cracks.

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We're Not Corporate Tech

Previously, I worked remotely for over a decade at corporate tech based in the Los Angeles area. Sure, it was stable and granted plenty of career experience, but the constant push for the next big thing continually overshadowed real human needs in the tech business. Business strategies were focused on the next big client; we forgot the collective value of the smaller clients we already had and the value of our long-term relationships.

This all accelerated with AI. Eventually, it was clear this was not where I should stay. The experience gave us the resolve to speak plainly and honestly, avoiding jargon and marketing hype, and to always remember that we're designing software for the benefit of real people.

Hometown Tech Economy

With Foxfang, I've returned my attention to Idaho and the people near me. It has been a much better career experience.

The local business scene in the Treasure Valley has been the best clientele I have ever had the pleasure of working with. There are so many great people bringing their talents to enliven our community, and it brings me joy to display their work online.

Though I favor Idaho, I am still a remote work professional. There are many great business communities outside of our state also, and I'm always pleased to find them. Even if you're not doing business in the Gem State, don't be shy!

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FAQ

Foxfang sets itself apart with four principles:

  1. We do real craftsmanship made by real humans. We prefer hand-coding, rather than relying on pagebuilders or generative AI.
  2. We establish long-term relationships so we can be very available to you rather than building a website and ghosting.
  3. We handle everything we can for you so that you can focus on running your business.
  4. We focus on building a good reputation within local communities through human connection.

We prefer that relationships be organic and formed from genuine mutual trust. Our goal is to regularly earn your business on an ongoing basis rather than lock you into a contract. We hope that you won't need to cancel your services with us, but financial pressures happen, and we understand that.

Quite a lot, in fact! We can attempt to remove the malware from it, or restore it from a backup. However, if you have a hand-coded website from us, it's extremely unlikely this will ever occur. AI hacking scripts dominate the security vulnerability scene, and these nearly exclusively target websites built with public pagebuilder platforms like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress.

It has its place as an assistance tool, but there are a few reasons why people choose us over AI:

  1. Generative AI is a regression to the mean. Because it embodies a conglomerate of art and code, it struggles to produce anything unique or impressive and can supplant our creative decision-making processes.
  2. Generative AI is not human. As such, it is incapable of creativity and uniqueness. Therefore, it cannot accurately represent you or your business as well as you can. This is also why we prefer real photos over stock photos and stock photos over AI generated images.
  3. Generative AI has an uncanny valley that some people are very sensitive to. Per the point above, lots of people have an involuntary aversion to seeing AI-generated material. We prefer that people enjoy your website rather than reflexively fixating on an image or paragraph of text, thinking, "Is this AI?"
  4. Generative AI halts human striving. After so many years in this ever-changing career, we don't want to stunt our skills by letting the computer have all the fun. People need challenges to solve with their own minds, even us programmers.
  5. Generative AI lacks pushback. AI is very affirming, but you don't need a Yes-man designing the website which undergirds your entire business! You need a real person with experience who can make definite calls from experience based on details that an AI can easily overlook.

That said, it's fantastic for time-saving on arduous tasks, such as removing image backgrounds, summarizing coding theory methods, and ordering long lists of data. We prefer to keep it in its place and let people thrive.

Nope! We'd love to keep you around, but only because of the quality of our work. We don't want you to be stuck. In reality, any web developer with average experience could take over maintenance and development of one of our website projects that we build for clients like you.

That said, we have intimate knowledge of your website's code and the experience of having built it in the first place. There's no learning curve for us!