From the Dawn of the Internet to the Age of AI

Ted Church has been working with technology since long before websites, search engines, or artificial intelligence became part of everyday life.

At 79, he is still building.

SiteCheck Pro is the latest chapter in a career that has repeatedly followed the same pattern: encounter a cumbersome problem, question why it has to work that way, and see whether technology can provide a better answer.

A Lifetime of Solving Problems

Ted's introduction to technology began early. After joining the Navy at 17, radar training in Pensacola introduced him to sophisticated electronics. Later came formal exposure to computer programming, including COBOL, BAL, FORTRAN and RPG.

But technology was never an end in itself.

Years later, while operating mortgage and title businesses, Ted encountered the repetitive paperwork involved in preparing and correcting closing documents. He developed database and form-printing software that could make corrections in under five minutes. The operation grew from roughly eight closings per month to more than 100.

It was an early lesson in something that would follow him throughout his career: software was most valuable when it didn't simply organize work—it eliminated unnecessary work.

Building for the First Internet Revolution

By the mid-1990s, Ted and his business partner and longtime friend, George Barriere, recognized the commercial possibilities of the emerging Internet.

Together they built an online presence for their aquatic business, Aquatic Connection—better known as AquaCon—at a time when most small businesses were still wondering whether they needed a website at all.

In 1996, AT&T invited Ted and George to New York City. AquaCon was one of four businesses, featured alongside Kraft Foods and two others, as part of AT&T's introduction of its new WorldNet service.

It gave them a front-row seat to a technological transformation that would eventually change nearly every business in America.

Ted's career remained connected to technology. He eventually became a network administrator for Starwood Hotels, managing the computer systems for a campus-style resort property in Hollywood, Florida.

An accident that resulted in bleeding on the brain abruptly ended that career and forced him into retirement.

Retirement, however, didn't end his interest in solving problems.

The Problem That Became SiteCheck Pro

Years later, Ted encountered a problem much closer to home.

Referrals coming through the website for his wedding-officiant business had dropped considerably.

He wanted to understand why.

He began trying website-audit services. Finding tools capable of identifying problems wasn't difficult. They produced scores, warnings, technical findings and lists of recommendations.

But Ted kept encountering the same frustration.

The software would identify the problems—and then hand the work back to him.

“All they gave me was homework.”

That complaint became the seed of SiteCheck Pro.

Why, Ted wondered, should software be able to discover a website problem but stop there?

Why couldn't it identify what was wrong, safely repair what could be repaired, explain what still required human attention, and then scan the website again to verify the result?

Building Again—This Time With AI

There was one considerable obstacle.

Ted had programming experience, but it belonged to an earlier generation of computing. Building a modern SaaS platform required frameworks, databases, APIs, authentication, servers, security, payment systems and technologies that hadn't existed when he learned to program.

This time, however, another technology was emerging.

Artificial intelligence.

Ted began using AI as a development partner—not to invent a business for him, but to help him turn an idea born from a real-world problem into working software.

Ted brought the problem, decades of business experience, product judgment and the decisions about what the software should accomplish. AI helped him navigate the modern technology required to build it.

The process wasn't effortless. There were bugs, failed approaches, server problems, rebuilt features and countless tests against real websites.

But gradually SiteCheck Pro evolved beyond another website-audit tool.

It was designed not merely to find problems, but to help website owners improve what could safely be improved and then verify the results.

An Important WordPress Test

For WordPress websites, that philosophy eventually led to the SiteCheck Pro AutoFix plugin.

Rather than simply releasing the plugin independently, Ted submitted it to the official WordPress.org plugin directory.

The plugin went through WordPress.org's review process. Changes were required. Code and security practices were examined. Ted and his AI development partner worked through the issues.

SiteCheck Pro AutoFix was ultimately approved and published in the official WordPress plugin directory.

For Ted, that approval meant something important.

Someone outside the project had examined the work.

It had passed.

Thirty Years Later

There is a fitting symmetry to the story.

In 1996, Ted and George were in New York as AquaCon participated in AT&T's introduction of WorldNet, at the beginning of an Internet revolution whose eventual impact nobody could fully predict.

In 2026, Ted finds himself building during another technological transformation.

This time he's 79.

The technologies have changed considerably. So has the Internet. But the instinct behind the work hasn't changed very much at all.

Ted encountered a problem.

He wasn't satisfied with the available solutions.

So he started building one.

And through nearly fifty years of marriage, businesses, successes, setbacks and new beginnings, Ted is quick to acknowledge that none of those chapters were lived alone. His wife, Rose, has been beside him throughout the journey—including this latest adventure.

SiteCheck Pro isn't the culmination of a lifelong plan to build a SaaS company.

It began because one website owner went looking for help, discovered that the available software mostly gave him more work to do, and wondered:

Why can't the software help solve the problems it finds?

At 79, Ted Church is still asking questions like that.

And he's still building the answers.