👋 Meet the Creator

My name is James Hamelton Jr and I am a self-taught software engineer based in Keokuk, Iowa. I did not go to school for this. I learned by doing, breaking things, rebuilding them, and refusing to give up when something did not work the way it was supposed to. That is still how I operate today.

I am also neurodivergent, which I think honestly explains a lot about the way I approach problems. I get fixated on things. I go deep. I care a lot about details that other people might skip over, and I have a hard time letting something go until it feels right. That is not always easy to live with, but it tends to produce work I am genuinely proud of.

I own and operate Hamelton Brands, LLC, a parent company for a collection of projects spanning software, publishing, e-commerce, and digital tools. I am also the developer behind Elliot Software, where I build practical, no-nonsense tools for WordPress and the open web.

Guno came from a frustration. I kept finding that the sites I actually wanted to read, the personal ones, the hand-coded ones, the ones made by real people with something genuine to say, had completely disappeared from search results. The big engines have no interest in surfacing them. They are buried under SEO farms, AI content, and corporate noise.

So I built my own search engine. Guno indexes only static websites, the kind that are hand-built without databases or server-side processing. No algorithmic manipulation, no tracking, no dark patterns. Just a directory of real human-made sites that you can actually search and browse.

To help grow the index, Guno also runs its own crawler that automatically discovers static sites by following links from known web directories, webrings, and community hubs. It checks every site it finds and only adds the ones that are genuinely static. If your site is already listed and you never submitted it, the crawler found you.

The Guno BBS at bbs.guno.cc grew from the same place. A Usenet-style message board, hand-built in PHP specifically for this community, because the people who love static sites deserve a place to talk that feels like the web they remember.

Guno is one piece of a larger picture. Here is a look at some of the other things I stay busy with:

• hamelton.dev — My personal website and central hub. The place where everything I build connects back to.
• Driver Watchdog IN DEVELOPMENT
  A community-driven reporting and issue tracking platform built specifically for Spark drivers and other gig workers. The idea is simple: gig workers deserve a place to document problems, spot patterns across thousands of other drivers, and hold platforms accountable through collective, organized reporting. I have been building the proprietary system behind it for over two years. It is the most complex thing I have ever built and I am not finished yet.
• Published fiction and independent storytelling projects
• Sticker shops and physical product stores
• Trend-based and viral clothing projects
• WordPress plugins and tools for independent site owners
• Domain research and the independent domain investing space
• findmh370.com — An independent information site following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

I am not trying to compete with Google. I am not trying to build the next big thing. I genuinely just love the simple web and I want to spend my time building things that are useful, honest, and maybe a little bit fun.

If you built a static site and you want it in the Guno index, submit it. If you have a thought, a bug report, or just want to say hello, come find me on the BBS. I actually read it.

Thanks for being here. It means more than you might think.