CMS & E-Commerce Development

Custom WordPress Themes—No Templates

I don't use ThemeForest templates or drag-and-drop builders. Every WordPress theme I build starts with a blank functions.php and a set of custom templates written from the ground up. That means your site loads only the CSS and JavaScript it actually needs, your markup is semantic and accessible, and your design matches your brand exactly—not some generic layout with swapped colors.

The practical difference is significant. A typical premium theme ships with 300+ kilobytes of CSS and a half-dozen JavaScript libraries you'll never use. A custom theme I build for a standard business site usually lands under 50KB of combined CSS and JS before compression. That translates directly into faster load times, better Core Web Vitals scores, and higher search rankings.

I use the WordPress block editor where it makes sense for client editing, but I register custom blocks with PHP and vanilla JavaScript rather than relying on third-party block plugins. This gives you a clean editing experience without the dependency chain that breaks every time WordPress pushes a major update.

Plugin Development

When an existing plugin does the job well and is actively maintained, I'll use it. But when your requirements don't fit neatly into what's available—or when the available options come with too much overhead—I write custom plugins.

I've built plugins for custom post types with complex relational data, form processors that integrate with third-party APIs, membership and access-control systems, booking engines, and automated content workflows. Every plugin follows WordPress coding standards, uses proper hooks and filters, and stores data in custom database tables when the postmeta table isn't the right fit.

One thing I always account for is what happens when the plugin needs to be updated or extended later. I write clean, documented code with clear separation of concerns so that any competent WordPress developer could pick it up if needed. You're never locked into a single vendor relationship with my work.

WooCommerce Store Builds

WooCommerce is the most flexible e-commerce platform available if you know how to work with it properly. The problem is that most WooCommerce setups are built on top of a generic theme with a stack of premium plugins that conflict with each other and slow the site to a crawl.

I build WooCommerce stores with custom themes designed specifically for e-commerce. That means optimized product templates, streamlined checkout flows, and a cart experience that doesn't require three round trips to the server. I handle variable products, subscription models, digital downloads, and mixed physical/digital catalogs.

For product catalogs with hundreds or thousands of SKUs, I build custom filtering and search interfaces that actually work at scale. The default WooCommerce layered navigation falls apart once you have more than a few dozen products with multiple attributes. I replace it with AJAX-powered filtering that queries efficiently and keeps the page responsive.

I also set up proper inventory management workflows, automated email sequences for abandoned carts and post-purchase follow-ups, and analytics tracking that gives you real visibility into your sales funnel—not just pageview counts.

Payment Gateways & Checkout Optimization

Getting the checkout right is where most e-commerce revenue is won or lost. I integrate payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Authorize.Net, and I configure them for the lowest possible friction. That means stored payment methods, express checkout options, and a flow that gets customers from cart to confirmation in as few steps as possible.

For businesses that sell subscriptions or recurring services, I set up Stripe's subscription billing with proper webhook handling so that failed payments, upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations all work automatically without manual intervention.

I also handle the less glamorous side: tax calculation with services like TaxJar or WooCommerce Tax, shipping rate calculations with real-time carrier APIs, and PCI compliance configuration. These details don't make for exciting marketing copy, but getting them wrong costs you sales and creates legal liability.

WordPress Performance Optimization

Speed matters for conversions and search rankings, and WordPress sites have a well-earned reputation for being slow. Most of that reputation comes from sites built with heavy themes and too many plugins. But even a well-built WordPress site needs proper optimization at the server and application level.

I configure object caching with Redis or Memcached, set up page caching with appropriate invalidation rules, optimize database queries (WordPress's default query patterns are surprisingly inefficient for large sites), and implement a CDN for static assets. On the front end, I handle critical CSS extraction, deferred JavaScript loading, responsive image sizing with WebP delivery, and lazy loading for below-the-fold content.

For sites that are already built and running slow, I do performance audits where I profile the actual bottlenecks rather than just running a Lighthouse scan and guessing. The slowest query on your site might be a single plugin doing an unindexed meta query on every page load. Finding and fixing that specific issue often does more than any amount of caching configuration.

WordPress vs. Headless CMS—When Each Makes Sense

Not every project needs WordPress, and I'll tell you that upfront. If you need a content-managed marketing site or an online store with complex product management, WordPress and WooCommerce are still hard to beat. The ecosystem is mature, content editors know how to use it, and the total cost of ownership is reasonable.

But if you're building a web application that happens to need some content management, or if you need to serve content across multiple platforms (web, mobile app, kiosk), a headless CMS like Strapi, Directus, or even WordPress in headless mode with a React or Next.js front end might be the better architecture.

I work with both approaches and I'll recommend the one that fits your actual requirements, your team's technical capacity, and your budget. There's no point building a headless architecture if your marketing team needs to make simple page edits and nobody on staff can deploy a Node.js application.

WordPress Security

WordPress is a common target precisely because it's so widely used. The platform core is generally solid from a security perspective, but the attack surface expands with every plugin and theme you install. I take a practical approach to WordPress security that focuses on reducing that surface area and hardening what remains.

That means keeping the plugin count low and auditing every plugin for code quality before installing it, configuring proper file permissions and database user privileges, implementing rate limiting and brute force protection at the server level (not with a plugin that runs on every page load), setting up automated backups with off-site storage, and maintaining a staging environment where updates are tested before they hit production.

I also configure security headers, implement Content Security Policy where feasible, and set up monitoring for file changes and suspicious login activity. For WooCommerce stores handling payment data, I ensure the hosting environment meets PCI-DSS requirements and that sensitive data is never stored where it shouldn't be.

Security isn't a one-time setup. I offer ongoing maintenance plans that include core, plugin, and theme updates applied on a regular schedule with testing, along with uptime monitoring and incident response if something goes wrong.