CMS & E-Commerce Development
I build WordPress sites and WooCommerce stores from scratch—no off-the-shelf templates, no bloated page builders. Every theme is hand-coded, every plugin is purpose-built, and every store is optimized for the metrics that actually matter: page speed, conversion rate, and long-term maintainability. If you need a content-managed site or an online store that performs like a custom application, this is how I work.
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.
Shopify Development
Shopify powers a large share of the e-commerce market, and for many businesses it is genuinely the right platform. I build on it, and I will recommend it over WooCommerce when it fits your situation better — the goal is a store that makes money, not loyalty to a stack.
The strongest argument for Shopify is everything you no longer have to think about. PCI compliance, hosting, CDN delivery, uptime during a traffic spike, and security patching are all handled by the platform. Their checkout is one of the most heavily optimized on the internet, tested against more transactions than any custom build will ever see. For a business without technical staff, that removes the single biggest risk in running an online store: an unmaintained site quietly becoming a liability.
The work I do on Shopify is the part that separates a template store from a real one. Custom themes built with Liquid, Online Store 2.0 sections so your team can rearrange pages without a developer, metafields for product data that does not fit the default schema, and custom apps when a business process has no off-the-shelf equivalent. I also integrate the systems around the store — syncing orders into a CRM or ERP, pushing inventory from a warehouse system, wiring up Klaviyo flows, and connecting fulfillment and shipping providers.
The honest tradeoffs are the monthly platform fee, the transaction cut if you do not use Shopify Payments, and real limits on customizing checkout unless you are on their enterprise plan. Deep changes to pricing logic, subscription mechanics, or B2B workflows are where a self-hosted store stops being harder and starts being easier.
The math is what decides it, not preference. At high volume, a few percent of revenue can dwarf what it costs to maintain your own store. At low volume with no technical staff, that same fee is cheaper than one bad weekend. I will run the numbers with you before either of us commits to a platform.
What I Build on Shopify
- Custom Liquid themes and Online Store 2.0 sections your team can rearrange
- Metafields and custom product data models beyond the default schema
- Private and custom apps for processes with no off-the-shelf equivalent
- Integrations with CRMs, ERPs, warehouse systems, and email platforms
- Migrations between Shopify and WooCommerce in either direction
ACF & Gutenberg: Editing Without Breaking Things
A WordPress build succeeds or fails on one question: can the client update the site themselves six months later without calling me and without wrecking the design? Two tools decide the answer.
Advanced Custom Fields replaces the "one big text box" editing experience with structured content. Instead of a staff member fighting a WYSIWYG editor to lay out a team member profile, they see labeled fields: name, role, headshot, bio, LinkedIn URL. The template controls presentation, the client controls content, and the two cannot collide. I use ACF for repeatable content types — staff, services, locations, case studies, testimonials, FAQs — and for flexible content layouts that let an editor assemble a page from pre-designed blocks that are physically incapable of rendering off-brand.
Gutenberg, the block editor, is now the native WordPress editing experience, and building custom blocks for it is the modern approach. A custom block is a designed component the editor can insert and configure through a proper interface, with a live preview of the real thing rather than a placeholder. The advantage over ACF alone is that blocks are native — no additional plugin dependency, and editors get the drag-and-drop composition they already expect.
What I deliberately avoid is a heavy page builder. Elementor, Divi, and their peers get a site launched quickly and then quietly tax it forever: bloated markup, degraded Core Web Vitals, and content permanently locked into shortcodes that become unreadable if the plugin ever goes away. I can work on an existing Elementor site — plenty of businesses have one and are not going to rebuild today — but I will not start a new project on one.
The measure of success here is boring and concrete: the client adds a new service page a year later, it looks exactly like the others, and nobody had to call me.
Headless CMS: WPGraphQL, Sanity, Strapi & Payload
A headless CMS separates where content is edited from where it is displayed. The CMS stores and manages content and exposes it over an API; a separate front end fetches it and renders it. That separation is either exactly what a project needs or an expensive answer to a question nobody asked, and the difference is worth being precise about.
Headless WordPress is the path of least resistance when a client already knows wp-admin and does not want to learn a new tool. WPGraphQL exposes the content as a typed GraphQL API that a Next.js front end can query, so editors keep the interface they know while visitors get a statically generated site that loads fast and scores well on Core Web Vitals. It also means the aging WordPress theme layer stops being your performance ceiling.
When there is no legacy to preserve, purpose-built options are cleaner. Sanity has an excellent real-time editing experience and treats content as structured data with a genuinely flexible query language. Strapi is self-hosted and open source, which matters when data residency or a fixed hosting cost is a requirement. Payload is TypeScript-native, config-driven, and can run inside the same Next.js application, which keeps a small team on one codebase and one deployment.
The strongest case for going headless is multiple surfaces. If the same content has to appear on a website, in a mobile app, and on in-store displays, a headless CMS means it is written once and consumed everywhere. Maintaining that content in three separate systems is how it silently drifts out of sync.
The honest cost is complexity. You now have two applications to deploy, monitor, and keep compatible, and content preview has to be built deliberately rather than assumed. For a marketing site with one editor who wants to change a headline and see it live, traditional WordPress is faster to build, cheaper to run, and easier to hand over — and I will say so even though headless is the more interesting build.
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