WordPress, built properly from scratch

Why WordPress

WordPress is the right choice when lots of people need to keep a site up to date. If you have a team of editors publishing news, events, case studies or campaigns every week, WordPress gives them an editor they already understand, and gives you a huge ecosystem behind it.

It’s not the answer to everything. If your site needs a lot of bespoke functionality, such as complex booking flows, customer portals or business logic that WordPress was never designed for, then I’ll usually recommend a custom Laravel application instead. I’d rather tell you that up front than bend WordPress into something it isn’t.

How I build it

Every theme I build starts from scratch, using the block editor (Gutenberg) and Advanced Custom Fields. That means:

• Blocks designed for your content. Editors get the components they need, styled to match the design, without being able to break the layout.
• No page builders. Elementor, Divi and similar tools are quick to start with, but they load a lot of code on every page and lock your content into their own format. I avoid them, and I regularly rebuild sites away from them.
• Only the plugins you need. Fewer plugins means fewer updates, fewer conflicts and fewer security holes.
• Fast by default. Lean templates, properly sized images and no unused scripts, so pages load quickly and score well on Core Web Vitals.

Hosting and support

For hosting, I recommend WP Engine: managed WordPress hosting with backups, staging sites and security built in. (I’m a WP Engine partner, so that’s a partner link.) Once your site is live, I offer support and maintenance retainers to keep WordPress, plugins and PHP up to date, fix issues quickly and handle the small changes that come up.

Working with agencies

I work with agencies as well as directly with clients. If you need an experienced WordPress developer to build from your designs, take on overflow or look after your clients’ sites, I’m happy to work under your name.