A still alpine lake mirroring the Sawtooth peaks at sunrise.

The Real Pitch

About This Demo

Amelia County Sheriff’s Office isn’t real. This site is — a working demonstration of what a modern recruitment website can be, built by Beardman DX.

Every agency we talk to says the same thing: “We can’t hire fast enough, and our website isn’t helping.” Most law-enforcement recruitment sites are a PDF and a phone number.

So we built the opposite — a complete, fictional agency, from the badge to the bios to the pay scale, and gave it the website we’d build for a real one. Distinctive design, disciplined motion, honest content, and the technical foundation that makes Google and candidates both take it seriously.

Nothing here is real. Everything here is buildable — for your agency, with your people, your county, your standards.

Under the Hood

The stack

Framework

Astro 5 (static-first)

Styling

Tailwind CSS v4 + design tokens

Language

TypeScript (0 type errors)

Motion

GSAP ScrollTrigger — lazy, one page

Hosting

Cloudflare Pages (edge)

Forms

Pages Functions + Turnstile + Resend

Images

astro:assets → responsive AVIF

Fonts

Self-hosted, subset, font-display: swap

Built to Score

Performance is a feature

~0 KB

Render-blocking JS on content pages

AVIF

Responsive images, priority hero (LCP)

1 page

Ships GSAP — the /process timeline only

5.6 KB

Gzipped home HTML

Reveal animations are CSS-driven and gated so content is never hidden if a script is slow — the LCP headline is guaranteed to paint. Everything is static HTML served from Cloudflare’s edge.

The Details

Choices we can defend

The government’s own typeface

Body copy is set in Public Sans — the typeface of the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), the federal government’s own design standard. It’s a small credibility signal that reads as “official” to the people who’d approve this site.

Structured data, done honestly

GovernmentOrganization, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, and Person schema ship site-wide — every fictional person marked as such. Google gets rich results; nobody gets misled.

Accessible by default

Visible gold focus rings, a skip link, keyboard-operable nav / accordions / form, prefers-reduced-motion honored everywhere, and descriptive alt text that notes officer portraits are fictional and AI-generated.

AI-ready

Clean semantic HTML, a llms.txt that tells AI systems exactly what this is, and canonical URLs, sitemap, and OpenGraph/Twitter cards on every page.

Capability, Not Spam

The JobPosting schema we chose not to ship

Google can show your openings directly in job search — but publishing structured JobPosting data for jobs that don’t exist is a fast way to earn a spam penalty on a real domain.

So the component is built and wired, but ships disabled behind a config flag. On a real agency site with real openings, it’s one boolean away. Here’s exactly what it would emit for a Deputy Sheriff posting →

  • Valid Google JobPosting markup
  • Salary, location, qualifications, benefits
  • Flagged fictional — never presented as real
JobPosting · disabled (EMIT_JOBPOSTING_SCHEMA = false)
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "JobPosting",
  "title": "Deputy Sheriff",
  "description": "Serve and protect across 2,400 square miles of Amelia County, Idaho. Full salary and benefits from day one, sponsored POST academy, take-home patrol vehicle, and a clear promotional ladder.",
  "identifier": {
    "@type": "PropertyValue",
    "name": "Amelia County Sheriff's Office",
    "value": "ACSO-DEP-001"
  },
  "datePosted": "2026-01-06",
  "validThrough": "2026-12-31",
  "employmentType": "FULL_TIME",
  "hiringOrganization": {
    "@type": "GovernmentOrganization",
    "name": "Amelia County Sheriff's Office",
    "sameAs": "https://ameliasheriff.us",
    "logo": "https://ameliasheriff.us/badge-512.png"
  },
  "jobLocation": {
    "@type": "Place",
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "addressLocality": "Park City",
      "addressRegion": "ID",
      "postalCode": "83000",
      "addressCountry": "US"
    }
  },
  "baseSalary": {
    "@type": "MonetaryAmount",
    "currency": "USD",
    "value": {
      "@type": "QuantitativeValue",
      "minValue": 66560,
      "maxValue": 91520,
      "unitText": "YEAR"
    }
  },
  "qualifications": "At least 21 at academy start; U.S. citizen or lawfully authorized to work; high school diploma or GED; valid driver’s license; able to pass background, polygraph, psychological, and medical screening.",
  "jobBenefits": "PERSI Police/Firefighter pension, county-paid health premiums, take-home vehicle, $1,200 equipment allowance, 100+ hours paid annual training, tuition reimbursement.",
  "disambiguatingDescription": "FICTIONAL job posting for a design demonstration by Beardman DX. Not a real position."
}

Want This for Your Agency?

Give your recruiting the site it deserves.

We’ll build it around your county, your people, and your standards — badge to bios to the last line of schema. Let’s talk.

A design demonstration by Beardman DX