001
Web Design & Custom Build
Brochure, landing, magazine, or directory—built mobile-first, hand-coded or in WordPress, with the same eye that designs our own work.
I
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The Cover
A small California magazine publishing the internet, one issue at a time.
Alumniyat publishes web experiments and incubates the ones that find an audience. A small design and development practice funds the work. Each issue we ship a new app—and let the visitors tell us whether to keep going. You’re reading Issue 02.
II
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The Practice
The design and development practice that funds the magazine.
Alumniyat is registered in California. The practice takes a small number of client engagements per year, finishes them properly, and uses the workshop hours in between to ship the experiments you’ll find in The Index. The work below is the same work, either way.
002
App Development
Static sites, Next.js apps, WordPress custom plugins, and small Python or Go services. We pick the stack the project needs, not the stack we’re comfortable with.
003
Hosting & Care
Long-term monthly retainers for clients who want their site quietly maintained, monitored, and improved. Our oldest engagement is ten years old.
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The Index
Three experiments, currently live.
Each entry below is a real, deployed website. Two are experiments the magazine is incubating; one is the sister brand under which the practice takes client work. Visitor behavior decides which graduate to their own domain.
I
PUBLIC BETA
FireGrade California
An independent navigator for California homeowners caught in the post–January 2025 wildfire insurance crisis. ZIP-level fire-zone read, a five-question FireGrade quiz that returns a letter grade, a curated broker directory, and a hardening checklist that persists across visits.
- +165% FAIR Plan policy growth, 4 yr
- 46/58 CA counties losing insurers
- $633B insured exposure on the backstop
Read the issue →
CONTINUED AT firegrade
II
PUBLIC BETA
PickleMap California
A directory for California’s pickleball boom: where to play, what’s open tonight, who’s organizing. The magazine’s first idea-builder release—dark-mode, lime-accented, sport-first—and the basis for the editorial template that runs throughout this issue.
- 36.5% US YoY pickleball growth (2024)
- 14M+ US players, projected 2026
- CA #1 court density, west coast
Open the map →
CONTINUED AT picklemap
III
SISTER PRACTICE
Webmaster & More
The client-services brand under which the practice takes outside engagements. WordPress builds, custom plugins, ten-year hosting retainers, ad-hoc development. Same craft as the magazine’s experiments—just billed by the hour or by the project.
- 10 yr longest active client
- $500–$5K typical project range
- SES AWS-routed transactional mail
Visit Webmaster & More →
EXTERNAL · webmasterandmore.com
FUTURE INDEX ENTRIES PUBLISHED HERE QUARTERLY · ARCHIVED ENTRIES MOVE TO /lab/
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Editor’s Notes
Short essays on how the magazine works.
Why we build the demo before we know if the idea is real.
A pitch deck is a document about a future product. A working demo is the product, abbreviated. We’ve learned the second one is a hundred times more useful: it’s shareable, it gets feedback by being used rather than read, and—most importantly—it answers the question of whether we can actually build the thing. Every Alumniyat experiment ships with real data, real interactivity, and a citable source list, because anything less is just a wireframe with a domain name.
SEE THE EXPERIMENTS →The publisher model: the practice pays for the magazine.
A long-running client retainer keeps the lights on; a few well-chosen project engagements per year pay for the workshop time. The workshop time is what makes the experiments possible—and the experiments are what convince the next client we can ship something distinctive. The two halves of the business aren’t parallel. They’re the same loop, run twice.
HIRE THE PRACTICE →
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Hire Us
Three ways to put the practice to work.
Pricing is honest, not promotional. Most engagements start with a 30-minute call, a written estimate, and a 50% deposit. Final pricing depends on scope; below is the working baseline for 2026.
PLAN A
Starter Build
$999
A small business landing or brochure site. Hand-coded or WordPress, mobile-first, your domain, fully your own.
- Up to 5 sections / 5 pages
- 1 round of revisions
- Launch within 2 weeks
PLAN B · EDITOR’S PICK
Custom Build
from $2,999
A bespoke site or small app. Custom design system, real interactivity, integrations, and editorial quality. The same shape as the experiments in The Index.
- Distinctive, hand-designed UI
- Custom backend or CMS
- Two rounds of revisions
- Launch within 4–6 weeks
PLAN C
Care Plan
$149/mo
Quiet, long-term hosting and maintenance. Monthly snapshots, security updates, small content edits, monitoring, the occasional design tune-up.
- Monthly backups + monitoring
- Up to 2 hr of edits per month
- Cancel any time, your data is yours
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Contact
Write to the editor.
Tell us what you’re building, or what you’d like us to build. Real notes get a real reply within two business days. The editor screens for spam first; we don’t use auto-responders.