About Provelopment Foundation
THE PROJECT
Provelopment Foundation is an open-source website foundation for small businesses and developers. It exists to move the starting line forward: a new website begins from a working, validated baseline instead of from an empty project, and what is built on it stays with whoever owns it.
- Licensed under the Apache License 2.0, with the source and the documentation that describes it public together.
- Self-hosted by design: a Foundation site is deployed to your own hosting account and your own domain.
- Independent of Provelopment: adopting it does not require a relationship with anyone.
The problem, repeated on every project
A small business website looks simple from the outside and is repetitive to build from the inside. The same ground is broken again on every project, and the cost of that repetition usually appears after launch rather than during the build.
The same fundamentals, rebuilt privately
Routing, content loading, metadata and structured data, navigation behaviour across viewport sizes, theming, language handling, accessible interaction, validation and deployment are solved again, in-house, under time pressure.
Identity scattered through application code
Business names, contact details, imagery and the page inventory end up spread across templates and components, so changing the business means editing the application rather than its configuration.
Presentation coupled to operational systems
When a booking provider, a map or an enquiry destination is wired directly into the presentation, changing that provider becomes a change to the website itself.
Work that cannot be handed over
A site whose behaviour lives in private implementation detail cannot be moved to another developer or agency with confidence, and improvements cannot be absorbed without risking what already works.
Why Foundation exists
A small business website looks simple from the outside and is repetitive to build from the inside. The same ground is broken again on every project, and the cost of that repetition usually appears after launch rather than during the build.
A reusable architecture
The recurring work is implemented once, as a product with documented layers, boundaries and a dependency direction that the tests enforce.
Clear ownership boundaries
What an adopter is expected to change — configuration, content, dictionaries and assets — is separated from platform code, so a site's own material never lives inside the platform.
Configurable identity and content
Identity, branding, navigation, business data and pages are configuration and content, validated at build time rather than assembled by hand.
Explicit integration seams
Where a website needs an operational system, the intent is modelled behind a provider-neutral seam that can be repointed without rewriting the site.
A documented route to running it
Adoption, customisation, content, validation, deployment and upgrade each have a document that owns the detail, and a validation gate that reports configuration problems at build time, with the setting named.
Foundation is not presented here as an outcome. The architecture, the tests and the running demonstrations are all public, so every claim on this website can be checked against them.
What the project is built on
A small number of decisions shape everything else. Each one closes off an easier option on purpose, and each one has a cost that is stated rather than hidden.
Ownership
Your copy of the repository is your deployment. Identity, content, dictionaries, branding and settings are yours to change, and there is no activation step, no licence server and no account that a running site depends on.
Open source
Foundation is distributed under the Apache License 2.0, and the documentation that describes it ships beside the code, so the explanation and the implementation cannot drift apart.
Separation
Foundation is a website foundation and stops there. It is not a CRM, an accounting platform, a payment ledger, a booking database, a customer-account system or an all-purpose business platform; where those are needed, they are reached through a seam or built beside the site.
Provider choice
Where an integration exists, it is modelled behind a provider-neutral seam, so a provider can be replaced without rewriting the site. The services and the hosting are chosen by the adopter, not by the foundation.
Portability
Staying with Provelopment for implementation or support is a service decision rather than a technical requirement. A Foundation site can be maintained by you, by a different developer or agency, or by nobody at all.
Evidence over claims
Capabilities are demonstrated in the running sites and exercised by the test and browser verification gates rather than asserted in prose. Where something is not implemented yet, this website says so instead of implying it.
The honest cost of these principles is fewer integrated capabilities and more configuration. This website states that cost rather than presenting the principles as free.
Who it is for
Foundation is used by organisations and by developers, and neither of them is the secondary case. The same baseline serves both; what differs is who does the work.
An organisation working with a developer or agency
The site is built, customised and deployed by people you engage. Foundation gives them typed configuration, documented boundaries and a deployment runbook instead of a blank project, and it leaves the site in a state you own afterwards.
A technically capable adopter
You obtain the repository, run it locally, configure the identity and the content, validate, and deploy it to an account you control. Everything needed is in the public repository, and nothing in it depends on Provelopment.
A developer or agency building for others
Foundation is a repeatable base: the differences between one site and the next are data rather than forks, so the second and tenth site cost less than the first and the codebase never becomes a special case for one business.
An organisation that wants help implementing it
The same foundation, with implementation or support arranged separately as an optional service. It changes who does the work, not what the site is built on.
Businesses and developers are both legitimate audiences, and the two audience pages describe the same product from each side rather than two different products.
Where it deliberately stops
Foundation stops before business operations begin. That boundary is a design decision rather than a gap waiting to be filled, and it is kept short here: the capabilities page owns the detail.
- Not a no-code website builder: a Foundation site is configured and deployed by someone with technical involvement.
- Not a CRM: customer relationships belong in a system that owns them.
- Not an accounting platform or a payment ledger: money is not recorded here.
- Not an operational booking database: the intent to book is modelled, the diary is not.
- Not a customer-account or authentication platform: the website does not hold customer identities, sessions or consent.
- Not a hosted service: it does not sit between you and your visitors, and it does not hold your data.
Where a capability in this list is genuinely needed, the intended pattern is an external service reached through an integration seam, or a system built beside the site.
Foundation and Provelopment
Provelopment maintains the foundation and can provide implementation help, technical assistance, support and managed services. The foundation itself does not depend on that, and this page describes the relationship rather than offering a service.
- Foundation stands on its own as an open-source project: obtain it, run it, adapt it, deploy it and maintain it without any involvement from Provelopment.
- Assistance is separate from the software and entirely optional. Nothing in the code, the documentation or the running sites depends on it.
- Foundation is not a free tier of a commercial product, and this website is not a funnel into one. Independent adoption is a successful outcome on its own terms.
- You may implement it yourself, use your own developer or agency, or ask Provelopment for help. Whichever route you take, the source you end up with is the same.
Provelopment's own site is where anything Provelopment provides is described; nothing on this project site is a service offer.
Licence and rights
The licence itself is short enough to read in a few minutes. This is only what it means in practice; it is not a replacement for the text.
- Foundation's own code and documentation are licensed under the Apache License 2.0, so you may use, modify, distribute and commercially exploit them, including inside a proprietary website, on the licence's terms.
- The licence is a copyright licence: it grants no rights in the Provelopment name, logos or branding, and it does not imply endorsement.
- Bundled third-party material keeps its own licence and attribution and is not relicensed by Foundation.
Retain the licence and attribution notices, and do not misrepresent changes. The licence text governs; this summary does not.
Where the evidence is
Nothing on this website needs to be taken on trust. Each of the following is public and can be inspected directly, which is the point of the project's claim discipline.
The running demonstrations
Two fictional businesses running on this same foundation, with their own identity, content and navigation.
The source and its documentation
The code, the architecture documentation, the customisation and deployment guides, and the licence, in one place.
The capability boundaries
What Foundation provides, what it deliberately leaves to other systems, and where each claim comes from.
The adoption route
The path from the repository to a running site, with the document that owns each step.
The project publishes no usage statistics, customer lists, contributor counts or performance figures, because none of those would be verifiable from the repository.
Start with the proof, or start with the source
Open a demonstration to see what a finished Foundation site looks like, read the repository to see what you would be working with, or take the adoption route when you are ready to build.