01
About
01
About
About Ashraven
Every saga
starts somewhere.
Ashraven is an independent digital agency in Carlisle, Cumbria, offering web design, SEO, hosting and maintenance. It's run by one person, with a long history of writing code and a career spent delivering complex projects.
02
The founder
02
The founder
ᚨ ᛊ ᚺ ᚱ ᚨ ᚹ ᛖ ᚾ
Chris Eden
Founder · Designer · Developer
Born and raised in Carlisle, I design and build WordPress / Shopify sites that are fast and straightforward for you to manage, and I look after them too — SEO, hosting and ongoing maintenance included. You work directly with me. No account managers, no hand-offs. I take the time to understand how your business works and who your customers are, then build a site that helps the right people find you, and makes it easy for them to take the next step.
— Chris
03
The journey
03
The journey
The saga so far
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Chapter I · Late 1990s
The Apprentice
I wrote my first website by hand in Notepad in the late nineties, long before page builders, and learned by breaking things and fixing them. That instinct never left. I still understand what’s happening underneath, so when something goes wrong I fix the cause, not just the symptom.
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Chapter II · 2003 – 2023
The Planner
Then came twenty years in the rail industry, including eight on the Leeds to York section of the £11bn Transpennine Route Upgrade, one of the biggest rail projects in the North. As a senior planner, work was booked months ahead into tight overnight and weekend closures of the line, where a slipped date meant crews stood down and costs climbing. It taught me to plan properly, flag problems early and never assume.
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Chapter III · Today
The Craft
All the while, I kept building websites, and the toolkit grew: HTML, CSS and JavaScript, frameworks like React and Next.js, and the libraries around them. I can hand-code a site from scratch, but I usually build on WordPress or Shopify, so you can update it yourself without needing me for every change. Now it’s my whole job, delivered with a rail planner’s eye for dates and detail.
04
How we work
04
How we work
Our approach
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Structured delivery
Each project begins with a defined scope, schedule and fixed cost, managed with the same rigour applied to major infrastructure programmes.
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Technical craft
More than twenty-five years of hand-written code underpins every build, producing websites that are fast, secure, accessible and built to standards.
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Long-term partnership
You work with one point of contact throughout, from initial consultation to ongoing hosting, maintenance and support well beyond launch.
05
The name
05
The name
Ash
Yggdrasil · the world tree
In Norse myth a great ash tree connects all nine worlds. It's the mark in our logo, and a reminder that design, search, hosting and care all grow from the same roots.
Raven
Huginn & Muninn · thought & memory
Odin's two ravens flew across the world each day and returned with what they'd learned. We do the same for your business: understand it, then carry it to the people looking for you.
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Let's start your saga.
Tell me about your project and I'll be in touch to talk it through.