It started with a simple question: if I'm moving to North Carolina in July and I want to start a small business doing IT consulting and 3D printing, should I just create an LLC there?
That question turned into a conversation about business structure, sales tax, payment processing, website architecture, government contracting, brand identity, and the biblical meaning of a stack of stones. By the end of it, I had a name, a brand palette, a font system, a logo, a full SvelteKit project scaffold, and a deployment plan.
The Stack Decision
The initial instinct was WordPress with WooCommerce. It's the default answer for "I need a shop." But when I thought about what the site actually needed to do — serve as a storefront, a technical portfolio, and a private dedication system — WordPress felt like bringing a forklift to move a chair.
The progression went: WordPress → Hugo (static site) → SvelteKit. Each step was driven by a real requirement. Hugo couldn't handle the interactive elements I wanted. SvelteKit gave me full control over every pixel while still compiling to fast, minimal output. And because I wanted this site to be a resume piece, the framework choice itself became part of the story.
Open Source as a Conviction
Every layer of this stack is open source except Stripe (payment processing requires regulatory compliance that makes self-hosting impractical). That's not an accident and it's not about saving money. It's about owning the platform.
I've spent enough time in enterprise environments watching vendors change pricing, deprecate features, and hold data hostage to know that the only infrastructure you truly control is the infrastructure you can see through. If Caddy disappeared tomorrow, I'd switch to Nginx in an hour. If SvelteKit pivoted in a direction I didn't like, my content is markdown and my templates are HTML. Nothing is trapped.
The Dedication System
This is the part I'm most proud of. Every physical product ships with a QR tag. Scan it and you land on a private page with a bible verse and a personal message. The page isn't indexed by search engines, isn't linked from the site navigation, and can only be reached by scanning the physical tag.
The name "Cairn" comes from Joshua 4, where God tells the Israelites to stack twelve stones after crossing the Jordan — a memorial so that when future generations ask "What do these stones mean?" they hear the story. Every product is a stone. Every QR tag is an invitation to ask the question.
The Numbers
Total cost to get this site live:
Under forty dollars for a production website with automatic HTTPS, served from Virginia, on infrastructure I fully control. Monthly recurring cost is under $8. That's the power of open source and knowing how to use it.
What's Next
The shop opens in July when the LLC is filed in North Carolina. Between now and then, I'm building the 3D product viewer (Three.js), the checkout flow (Stripe), and the full dedication system with timelapse video support. I'll write about each of those as they come together.
If you want to follow along, the source code is on GitHub.
This is the first post in a series documenting the build of Cairn Technologies. Next up: implementing the QR dedication system.