onward
For businesses
I work directly with in-house teams on the WordPress, Laravel and Statamic builds that need to last. The kind of partnership where you've got someone steady to think things through with, who'll push back where it matters, rather than another layer of agency sitting between you and the work.
Trusted directly by
A / In-house team
You've already got someone running the strategy on your side, so what you really need is a developer who can build, ship and then quietly look after the platform alongside them. No account managers, no billable-hour slowdowns, and no nasty surprises showing up in the second invoice.
B / Outgrowing templates
The site you've got did its job and got you started, but now it's quietly starting to hold you back, with page builders that fight the design, performance that isn't quite where you need it, and content models that don't really match how your team actually works. It's time for a proper custom build on WordPress, Statamic or Laravel.
C / Inherited a build
A lot of my work actually starts in exactly this kind of place. I take on existing codebases, dig through what's there, document the bits worth keeping and rebuild the bits that aren't, and we only re-platform when there's genuinely a good reason to.
The shape of an engagement stays much the same whether you need a full rebuild, a single feature drop or six months of steady iteration alongside your team. You'll get plain English at every step, and I won't hand-wave on scope when something needs to be properly defined.
01, Discovery call
A 30 to 45 minute conversation about the work itself, the deadline you're working to, the budget you have in mind, and what a good outcome actually looks like for you. Free, and there'll be no PowerPoint involved.
02, Scoped proposal
You'll get a written proposal back from me with a fixed scope, a three-band price and a realistic timeline. From there, you either sign it as it stands, or we sit down and redraw the shape of it together.
03, Build
I tend to work in writing by default, so every Friday you'll get a written progress note from me covering what's shipped that week, anything that's blocked, and what's coming up next. We don't run daily standups, because they aren't usually the right shape for this kind of work.
04, Launch & care
A proper launch checklist, training sessions for your team, written documentation they can come back to, and a care plan that runs from month one. The code, the hosting and the accounts all belong to you, never to me.
After years of shipping work for paying clients, I'll tell you honestly when an idea is going to come back and bite you in eighteen months, and I'll suggest something better in its place. There's no quiet handover to a junior developer halfway through the project either, you get me from start to finish.
Weekly written progress notes you can forward to your team or paste into a board update without having to translate them first. No jargon, no talk of velocity, no story points to decode, just a clear picture of what's shipped, what's next, and what I need a decision on from your side.
Standard frameworks, sensible architecture and code that's properly documented. The platforms I built six years ago are still running today, and whatever I build for you should be something you can hand to any developer long after I'm gone.
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Direct client
Utilita EnergyLaravel + Filament
A bespoke web application and admin tooling built for one of the UK's largest pre-payment energy suppliers, working directly with their in-house team without an agency sitting in the middle of the conversation.
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Direct client
Coeliac UKWordPress at scale
A custom WordPress build for the UK charity supporting people with coeliac disease, covering the member area, the content tooling and the integrations behind the scenes. Built once, six years ago, and looked after ever since.
In their words
“Dan slotted into our team like he'd been here for years. He runs his own brief, pushes back where it matters, and writes updates I can paste straight into a board pack. We don't use anyone else for the platform now.”
Wherever I can, I quote per project rather than per hour, so you get a fixed scope and a fixed price together and there shouldn't be any nasty surprises along the way. Day rates are available for ongoing retainer work and for shorter pieces of work too. Both sit in the senior-developer range, and we'll talk through the actual numbers on the discovery call once I really understand what you need.
Yes, and honestly this is a large part of what I do day to day. We'd start with a paid audit, where I take a few days to read through the codebase properly, document what's there, flag the technical debt that's lurking, and write you a plan in plain English so you can actually act on it. From there, we either pick up where the previous developer left off and keep moving forward, or we plan a sensible rebuild together. We only ever re-platform when there's a genuine reason to.
Yes, and most clients stay on one after launch. Care plans cover the security updates, the framework upgrades, fixes for the things that inevitably break, and a small allocation of monthly hours for the smaller changes that crop up. Some clients have been on a care plan with me for the better part of a decade now. They're tiered, billed monthly, and there's no minimum term you have to commit to.
I'll recommend the right host for what we're building together, which usually means a managed platform like Kinsta, WP Engine, Cloudways or Forge depending on the stack we're using. The account always stays in your name (I'm a collaborator on it, not the bill-payer) and if you already have hosting that genuinely works for you, we just keep using what's there.
Always. Most projects I work on involve at least one of an in-house marketing lead, a freelance or agency designer, a copywriter, or a separate SEO consultant. I'm happy in your Slack, your Notion, your Linear, your GitHub, whatever it is you're already using day to day. I won't bring along my own set of tools and ask everyone else to learn them.
Holidays get scheduled around your timeline and flagged at proposal stage so they aren't a surprise to anyone. For longer engagements, I work with a small network of trusted senior developers who I've known for years, and they can step in for emergency cover under my supervision when something needs it. Day to day, my codebases are documented and standard enough that any senior developer could pick them up without much trouble.
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