Rebuilding the agency site in public
Lab Build 02: moving digitopia.design off WordPress and onto the stack I use for everything else, written up as it happens.
Follow the buildI make complicated things simple, then build them.
Twenty years in UX. Now I run Digitopia Labs, an AI infrastructure studio, plus a few side brands for the fun of it, from a desk in Sussex - one person, a team of five.
Things I’ve built and still run
- digitopia.labs
- digitopia.app
- The Chilli Index
- dad humor
- Bantered
Darren Wells
Founder, Digitopia Labs and Digitopia DesignUX designer turned AI builder- darren@digitopiadesign.com
- Based
- Sussex, UK
- Hours
- Mon to Fri, around the school run
The numbers
- 20 yrs Designing digital things
- 100+ Sites shipped since 2005
- 5 Brands live and running
- 1 of 5 Humans on the team
Now Updated September 2026
The three things getting my hours this quarter. It changes; the date tells you how stale it is.
Blueprints for solo experts
Working with people who are the whole business - coaches, advisers, consultants - to set up an AI workspace that works in their voice, not a generic one.
Over at LabsGetting Bantered onto shelves
A merch brand for people who take the mickey. Next in the queue behind the client work, which is where side projects always sit.
See the shopWhat I’ve built
Two companies, a platform I run everything on, and a handful of brands that exist because I found them funny or useful. Each has its own logic; none of them are practice.
Founder, 2026 to now
Digitopia Labs
An AI infrastructure studio. Working AI setups for solo experts and small firms - audits, blueprints, custom skills, retainers - with the working shown on the Lab.
Built and run daily
digitopia.app
My own business operating system - tasks, clients, content board, notes - with an MCP server so my AI team reads and writes to it directly. Replaced ClickUp.
Since 2019
Digitopia Design
The UX and web agency. Pensions and financial services clients, mostly. Still live, still good at it.
Reference site
The Chilli Index
A UK chilli variety database with a grow tracker. Started because I grow them and couldn’t find a good one.
Joke app
Dad Humor
Exactly what it sounds like. Groan-rated. Built solo, marketed solo, apologised for often.
Speech builder
make.banteredhq.comBantered
Helps a best man write his own speech instead of buying one off the shelf.
And a few more in the lab
See what’s cookingThe Lab: showing my working
Every build gets written up as it happens. What I made, what broke, what it cost. Here’s the current one.
Lab Build 02, in progress
Moving my own agency site off WordPress, in public
digitopia.design has been on WordPress since 2019. It’s being rebuilt on Next.js and Vercel as a living case study - the 301 map, the trade-offs and the before-and-after all published.
Follow the buildWant to go further?
Lab
Build 01
Build 01
The brand-options tool
The first Lab build: a small tool that turns a brief into brand directions you can react to.
digitopia
.app
.app
Running a company on a tool I built
Why I replaced ClickUp with my own business OS, and how my AI team plugs into it.
AI
readiness
readiness
The AI Readiness Scorecard
Five minutes, honest score, and a note on what to fix first. Free.
Weekly
blog
blog
The Labs blog
The practical stuff on AI workspaces for small firms, once a week.
One operator, a team of five
I ran UX teams for years - hiring, reviews, resourcing, the lot. I still run a team. Four of the seats are AI agents with defined jobs, a shared source of truth in digitopia.app, and skills I’ve written so they do things my way rather than the default way.
I make every decision that matters and sign off everything that ships. The agents do the stretches in between: drafts, research, builds, admin. That’s the whole pitch of Labs, and it’s how I run my own week first.
Two things it’s taught me. Plan first, then build - agents make doing the wrong thing fast very cheap. And build in public: the working is more useful to people than the finished thing.
- DW
Darren - direction, design, decisions
Strategy, UX, client relationships, final say. Also the only one who can be wrong in a meeting.
- CS
Chief of staff
Monday brief, weekly review, profitability checks, triaging the capture inbox. Reads digitopia.app every morning.
- BD
Builder
Ships Next.js, Supabase and Vercel work from a handover note, runs the security sweep, flags anything touching auth or payments for my review.
- WR
Writer
Drafts in each brand’s voice from its brand documents, then runs a de-slop pass so it doesn’t read like a robot wrote it.
- RS
Researcher
Competitor scans, keyword work, audits, reading the long documents so I don’t have to. Everything filed back into the second brain.
Want to work together? That happens through Labs.
This site is me. The commercial bit - the audit, the blueprint, custom skills, retainers, the booking link - lives on digitopialabs.com so there’s one front door and one set of prices.
Off the clock
Unavailable before 8:45 and between 2:50 and 3:30 on weekdays. That’s the school run, and it’s non-negotiable.
3
Kids
The reason for the hours above and the target market for most of the jokes.
60+
Chilli plants
Every summer. Hence the database. Hence the very specific opinions about scoville ratings.
24
Christmas films
Watched, rated, argued about. There is a scoring rubric. A whole site is probably overkill.
∞
Post-it notes
Still counting. The old version of this site had a counter. It never worked.
Some history
The short version. The long version is on LinkedIn.
- Digitopia LabsSpun the AI work out into its own studio. Design keeps its clients; Labs gets the energy.
- Fund Boards CouncilUX consultant. Still working with them - most recently a custom report skill and a product sprint.
- Digitopia DesignFounded the agency. Over a hundred sites shipped since, mostly for pensions and finance firms who needed things to be clear.
- The People’s PensionUX designer, then senior, then UX manager. Built the team, wrote the process, embedded it.
- First site shippedA year after a business degree at Winchester. Learned the rest by doing it.
Questions I get asked
Short answers. Longer ones over email.
How do you work?
Fixed scopes, fixed prices, working days not hours. I plan before I build, I show the working on the Lab, and anything touching your data or money gets reviewed by me personally before it ships.
Who do you work with?
Solo experts - coaches, advisers, consultants - and small firms where consistency across a team is the problem. If you’re building it yourself, the Lab and the blog are for you and I’ll say so rather than sell you something.
Do you still do UX and web design?
Yes, through Digitopia Design, mostly for pensions and financial services clients. It’s migrating off WordPress to a new stack that integrates directly with AI chat. It’s a separate front with separate pricing. Email me and I’ll point you to the right place.
What does it cost?
All the prices are on digitopialabs.com and they don’t change depending on who’s asking. Nothing here is a course or a membership.
Where’s the writing?
LinkedIn first, posted as me. The Labs blog weekly. The AI Layer newsletter when there’s something worth sending. This site doesn’t have a blog on purpose.
What are the side brands about?
The Chilli Index because I grow them, Dad Humor because I have three kids and no shame, Bantered for the best man speech builder at make.banteredhq.com. Each one pays its own way or gets parked.