🛒 WordPress Development

Freelance WordPress
Development Services

I don't use page builders. Elementor, Divi, WPBakery I know them all and I don't use them on client work. They look fine at launch and they're a liability at 18 months. If you want WordPress built with hand-coded PHP 8 that you actually own and control that's what I do.

12+

Years on WP

170+

Projects Delivered

5.0★

Upwork Rating

$25

Starting /hr

What I Do

What Does WordPress Development Actually Entail?

I turned down a project last year because the brief required Elementor. The client was surprised. I explained that I'd seen too many Elementor sites come back to me 12 months later slower than at launch, breaking after a theme update, with a codebase nobody could read cleanly. Custom PHP 8 costs more upfront and lasts significantly longer. That's a trade-off worth understanding before you start.

I've been on WordPress since version 3.0 - before Gutenberg, before the block editor, when ACF was new and WooCommerce had just arrived. The 170+ projects since cover WooCommerce stores now processing over a million dollars a year, membership platforms with 10,000+ subscribers, healthcare portals, enterprise multisite networks, and a fair number of broken sites built by people who took shortcuts and moved on. The broken ones are probably why I'm careful about the shortcuts.

For a new build: I take your Figma or PSD and write a custom theme from scratch, build whatever plugins your business logic needs, wire WooCommerce to your payment provider, harden the site against the specific attacks WordPress attracts, and handle launch. For an existing site: I read the code first and give you an honest read on what's worth fixing versus what's better rebuilt. I also wire OpenAI and Claude API into existing WordPress sites AI chatbots, smart product recommendations, automated content tools without rebuilding anything. Written scope before anything starts. Fixed price. One developer from start to finish.

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🍷

Custom Theme Development

Hand-coded from Figma or PSD pixel-perfect, fast and fully yours

🛒

WooCommerce Stores

Custom product types, Stripe/PayPal, subscriptions and advanced checkout flows

⚙️

Plugin Development

Purpose-built plugins for any functionality REST API, ACF, CPT and more

🚀

Performance & SEO

Core Web Vitals, caching, image optimisation and structured data

What You Get

What a Freelance WordPress Developer Can Do for Your Site

Whether you're starting fresh or dealing with a site that's gone wrong here's where I spend most of my time.

✓

Custom Theme from Your Design Files

Figma, PSD or even a rough mockup converted into hand-coded PHP 8 templates that behave exactly as designed. No premium theme with 90% of features you'll never touch.

✓

Diagnose & Fix What's Broken

White screens, broken checkouts, plugin conflicts after an update. I read the error logs, find the actual cause and fix it not just the visible symptom. If the real problem is the site architecture, I'll say that clearly.

✓

Speed Without Changing Your Hosting

I've taken WordPress sites from 3-second load times to under a second without touching the server. Usually it's slow database queries, unoptimised images and render-blocking scripts. Fix those first, before spending money on faster hosting.

✓

Security Before Something Goes Wrong

WordPress is the most targeted CMS on the internet. File permission hardening, login protection, security headers, plugin audit and database hardening done at build time, not as a patch after a breach.

✓

Handover Your Team Can Actually Use

A walkthrough with your team and written documentation so they can manage content, add pages and handle day-to-day tasks without calling a developer. That's the goal your independence after launch, not your dependence on me.

✓

Maintenance That's Actually Maintained

Core and plugin updates tested on staging before they touch production. Daily backups stored off-site. I check what each update changes before applying it WordPress updates have broken live sites and that's not something you want to discover on a Monday morning.

✨

AI Integration GPT-4o & Claude Inside Your WordPress Site

I wire OpenAI and Claude API into existing WordPress and WooCommerce sites AI chatbots for customer support, product recommendation engines, smart lead qualification forms, content generation tools and AI-powered search. Your existing WordPress site, working significantly smarter. No rebuild required the AI layer sits on top of what you already have.

The Platform

Why WordPress Is the Right Foundation

My honest take after 12 years building on it what it does well and what it needs a good developer to handle properly.

👥

Your Team Can Use It Without Training

The WordPress admin takes most non-technical people about 20 minutes to get comfortable with. Adding pages, uploading media, editing content none of that needs developer time. That matters when you're paying for development, not content updates.

📦

60,000 Plugins Most of Which You Won't Need

The plugin ecosystem covers nearly any standard feature: contact forms, SEO, payment gateways, booking, memberships. The real skill is knowing which ones are maintained well and which ones create problems. That's the kind of thing 12 years teaches you.

🎨

Premium Themes Exist. I Don't Use Them.

There are well-built premium themes and they're fine for some projects. For anything that needs specific behaviour or long-term stability, custom is the better call. I'll tell you honestly which category your project falls into before we start.

🔄

Security Patches That Actually Arrive

The WordPress security team patches vulnerabilities quickly. What matters is applying those updates on staging first, then production, after checking what changed. I've seen updates break things. Automatic updates without testing is how live sites go down.

🔍

Good for SEO If You Build It Right

Clean URLs, semantic markup and strong SEO tooling are built in. What isn't automatic: page speed, structured data, proper canonical tags, Core Web Vitals. The platform gives you a solid starting point. The execution is what determines whether you rank.

🌐

12 Years of Community Documentation

Almost every WordPress problem has been hit, solved and written about by someone else. That means faster debugging, better solutions and shorter timelines. When something unusual comes up, the answer is usually two searches away.

Why Harwinder

Why Hire Me as Your Freelance WordPress Developer?

Senior WordPress experience at freelance rates. One developer who knows the platform deeply not a ticket in an agency queue.

📅

12+ Years on WordPress Since 3.0

170+ projects across healthcare, eCommerce, SaaS and publishing. I know which plugin combinations conflict, which architectural shortcuts show up as problems two years later, and how WordPress internals behave under real load. That's not something you learn from documentation.

📞

No Page Builders. Ever.

Every theme I deliver is hand-coded PHP 8. No Elementor, no Divi, no WPBakery. If your design changes, I edit the code not a drag-and-drop panel that adds 200kb of markup to every page. Your site stays fast, stays yours and doesn't break when a plugin updates.

💻

Code Another Developer Can Read

OOP, PSR standards, properly namespaced plugins, commented logic. I write code the way I'd want to inherit it which means when you bring on a developer two years from now, onboarding is hours, not weeks.

🎨

Figma to WordPress Pixel Accurate

I work from your design files and build what's in them not an approximation that's "close enough." Spacing, typography, responsive behaviour, hover states. If it's in the Figma, it's in the build.

📋

No Disappearing Acts

The most common complaint about freelance WordPress developers isn't skill it's reliability. I provide a written project spec before work begins, daily staging updates during development and same-day replies throughout. You'll always know exactly where the project stands.

🚀

90+ PageSpeed Built In, Not Bolted On

Performance isn't a plugin I install at the end. It's in the decisions made during build: minimal dependencies, efficient queries, proper caching strategy, no render-blocking scripts. Sites I build score 90+ on PageSpeed without a performance plugin doing the heavy lifting.

💰

$25/hr No Agency Markup

WordPress development starts at $25/hr. Fixed-price quotes available once the scope is clear. As a solo developer with no sales team or account managers, my overhead is low and that difference goes directly to your budget.

💬

Same-Day Replies, Honest Timelines

IST overlaps with US mornings and UK afternoons. I reply same-day, update staging daily during builds, and tell you if a deadline is at risk before it's missed not after. If something changes, you hear it from me first.

How It Works

My Process for Building Your WordPress Website

Same structure every time so there are no surprises for either of us.

Discovery Call

A free 30-minute call. I ask about your goals, your current site, what's broken, what's missing and what success looks like. No sales deck just questions so I can scope it accurately.

Written Proposal

Scope, milestones, cost and timeline in writing, before anything starts. Plugin choices explained. Edge cases called out. If anything is ambiguous at this stage, we clarify it here rather than mid-build.

Design Review

If you have Figma files or a PSD, I work from those directly. If you need design input, I'll work from your brand, reference sites you like and feedback until the direction is locked before code starts.

Development

PHP 8, WordPress coding standards, ACF where appropriate, custom plugins written to your business logic. Staging URL updated daily so you can follow along and give feedback as it's built not in one big reveal at the end.

Testing

Mobile, tablet and desktop. Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. PageSpeed checked. All forms and checkout flows tested end to end. Security headers verified. Nothing goes to the launch conversation until staging is clean.

Handover & Training

A walkthrough with your team covering the WordPress admin, how to manage content and how updates work. Written documentation so the knowledge lives somewhere permanent not just in someone's head.

Launch

Production deployment, full codebase handover, credentials and documentation. The first 30 days of questions and small tweaks are included no separate invoice for things that come up right after go-live.

Ongoing Maintenance

Core and plugin updates applied to staging first, checked, then pushed to production. Daily automated backups stored off-site. Uptime monitoring. Available on retainer if you want someone keeping an eye on things month to month.

Always Reachable

I don't disappear between updates. Questions get same-day replies. Feedback goes into the next staging push. The project isn't done until the site is working the way you need it to work not when the checklist says done.

Available for new projects

Ready to Build Your WordPress Site?

Send me the brief or just describe what's wrong. A slow site, a broken checkout, a design that needs rebuilding properly, or something new you want built. I'll take a look, ask whatever questions I need, and send back a written scope and price. Typically within 24 hours.

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