Common questions

Yes. Preventing crawl blockers, speed regressions, and broken page elements helps protect rankings and keeps your lead pages reliable for visitors.

If SEO is the larger concern beyond maintenance scope, the Technical SEO service covers the dedicated audit and implementation work.

Twenty minutes on a call. You describe the situation, I tell you which engagement fits and roughly what the band looks like. No prep needed; no slide deck; no proposal afterwards. The discovery call is the free entry to the 4-tier audit ladder — if a paid audit is the right next step we set it up on the same call. If the fit is not there, you will hear that directly rather than in a follow-up sales pitch. Book the discovery call →

Who logs in to the site in a normal week is the question. Owner-run sites are for businesses where one owner, or a working pair, manages the site and the customer is the audience — the site sells you, books your work, and gets out of the way. Team-run sites are for organisations where several contributors publish, edit, or operate the site every week and the build has to keep up with the team behind it as well as the audience in front of it. If you have a team of three or more, contributors you do not personally manage, a membership, or content that needs governance — you are team-run, even if it feels owner-run.

Four paid options, scaling by depth. A free 20-minute discovery call to figure out which conversation you are actually having. A $500 pre-check with a 2-page written read on headline risks. A $1,000 mid audit with a 10–15 page diagnostic and a 30-minute debrief call. A $2,200 deep audit with a 30–50 page report covering architecture, performance, accessibility, integrations, and a written risk register. Any paid audit fee credits in full against a build engagement booked within 90 days of report delivery. A level-matched audit comes free with every build — the paid ladder is for buyers who want diagnostic work before deciding whether or what to build.

For the work in-house developers are not set up to do or do not love doing: paid audits at four tiers ($500 through $2,200), platform migration scoping, performance triage, accessibility remediation, and second-opinion architecture reviews where an outside senior pair of eyes saves the team from validating their own decisions. Every audit is documented so your team owns the result afterwards — no lock-in, no retainer obligation. If the gap is steady upkeep rather than a project, see Maintenance at $750/mo and up.

Scoped against a price band — never an open-ended hourly. Discovery call → level-matched audit (free, $500, $1,000, or $2,200 depending on scope) → written scope with a fixed tier in the band → delivery in weeks, not quarters. The audit fee credits against the build if you proceed within 90 days; a level-matched audit is included in every build price. Use the WordPress Project Scope Estimator to land in the right tier before the call, or skip it and we will figure it out together in twenty minutes.

Yes — audit and remediation work on existing sites is a large part of the practice. Most of those engagements start with the $2,200 deep audit so we both understand what is there before anyone commits to a build. The $1,000 mid audit is the right depth when you have already named the issues and need order-of-operations on the fixes. The discovery call is the right place to figure out which tier fits.

Yes. Build, audit, and SEO work is fully remote; clients are based across Canada and the United States. Onsite training and onsite delivery are limited to the Niagara region — remote training runs across Canada and beyond. See Training and enablement for delivery options and rates.

The headline number on an agency proposal is the developer hour. The all-in number adds the producer, the account manager, the designer, and the rework cycle when a brief drifts. On my side, you talk to the senior doing the work, scope is fixed against a band, and there is no context-switching premium when the brief shifts mid-project. Most engagements come out flat or cheaper all-in than the agency equivalent, and the calendar time is consistently shorter.

Both. I run private on-site team sessions across Niagara and open registration events when dates are posted. Distributed teams can train on Microsoft Teams or Zoom with the same materials and reference sheets.

Open public events have no minimum — register your seat directly from the event page. Private team bookings use a single day-rate model: $1,800 per day for up to 10 participants, billed in full-day blocks.

Yes. Custom workshops start with a 30-minute scoping call to map the agenda to your actual toolset and skill gaps. Use the Book Team Training link at the top of this page to start that conversation.

Two to three weeks is usually enough for onsite delivery in Niagara. Virtual sessions can often run within a week. Custom workshops need a scoping call first, so allow an extra week for that step.

Private on-site training: $1,800 per day for up to 10 participants. Multi-day classes bill at the same day rate — a two-day workshop is $3,600, a three-day workshop is $5,400. Travel throughout the Niagara region is included. Open public events are priced per student on the events calendar, and the 20-minute scoping call confirms your fixed quote for private delivery.

I do — Christopher Ross. Twenty-two years of training delivery, currently a Training & Development Specialist at M.L. Campbell (Sherwin-Williams), and an MA Candidate in Learning & Technology. Earlier instructional-design work includes WordCamp speaking, federal departments, and provincial education clients. Every session on this page is delivered by me, not subcontracted.

Yes — participants receive a PDF certificate of completion with the course name, date, and trainer. Useful for HR records and manager reporting. Group completion summaries are available on request.

Yes. The portfolio reflects delivered work. Some entries use shortened client context where confidentiality requires it, but the implementation and outcomes are from real engagements.

Portfolio entries provide concise project snapshots. Case studies are long-form narratives with more detail on constraints, trade-offs, and measured outcomes.

Yes, with consent. After a discovery call and once scope is mutually understood, I will reach out to specific past clients on your behalf and ask whether they are willing to take a short reference call. I never share client contact details, names, or engagement details without their prior written permission — that includes confidentiality clauses on active engagements.

The portfolio focuses on WordPress-adjacent delivery because that is the core practice. Adjacent advisory and architecture work is considered when it supports that surface.

Most implementation engagements shown here start in the mid-four to low-five figures and are scoped against fixed pricing bands after discovery.

Portfolio entries are project snapshots — what got built, the constraint that drove the call, what shipped. Case studies are post-mortem essays — the same projects pulled apart on the table afterwards: the trade-off I made and why, the thing that did not work and what we did instead, the outcome measured three months later. If you want to scan delivered work, the portfolio is faster. If you want to read how a decision held up over time, this is the page.

It depends on the engagement and what the client agreed to make public. Where the client signed off on attribution, the case study names them and the people involved. Where the work touched something sensitive — a contentious platform migration, a vendor dispute, an editorial workflow that broke under load — the study is written anonymously and the technical detail stays. I never name a client, person, or engagement detail without prior written consent.

Yes. The discovery call is the right place to start; reference the case study that resembles what you are trying to ship and the call gets fifteen minutes shorter. From there it follows the normal path — level-matched audit, scope at a fixed band, delivery in weeks. Several of these projects started with a paid $2,200 deep audit before anyone committed to a build; if your situation looks like that, say so on the call.

A case study takes two consents and one quiet quarter. The client has to agree to the write-up, the timing has to be far enough past launch that the outcome is measurable rather than hopeful, and I have to make the time to actually write it. Most engagements stay on the portfolio instead because at least one of those three things did not line up. The studies that do land here are the ones where all three did.

Mostly mid-four to low-five figures of paid work, sometimes higher. The decision about whether something becomes a case study is not about the price tag — it is about whether there is an architectural call, trade-off, or migration story worth pulling apart. A $5,000 audit that prevented a six-figure migration mistake is more interesting case-study material than a routine implementation at four times the size.

Yes. Because HEIC is a specialized format, the standard PHP GD library cannot process it. The plugin requires the ImageMagick (Imagick) extension with libheif support on the server. Most managed WordPress hosts provide this.

Yes. Every asset on this page is free to download and use. No account, no email capture, no payment required.

Yes. Most use MIT or GPLv2 — check the README in each repo for the specifics.

Watch the repo on GitHub and you will get a ping on every release. Plugins installed through WP admin update the normal way.

Fork it. If you fix something I should have caught, send a pull request — issues are open too.

Yes. All calculators are free, require no login, and have no usage limits. Use them as many times as you need for any project.

Results include standard industry waste factors and rounding conventions. They are accurate for planning and procurement estimates. Always confirm final quantities with your supplier before ordering.

Yes. All calculators are mobile-friendly and work in any modern browser. No app install required. Bookmark the calculator URL for fast repeat access.

No. Results are not stored or transmitted. If you need to reference figures later, screenshot or note the output before closing the browser.

Use the contact form to request a specific calculator. If the formula is standard and the use case is practical, it may be added in a future update.

Each event page has a registration link. For open sessions, registration closes 48 hours before the start time or when capacity is reached.

Yes. Use the Onsite Training Across Canada or Remote Training For Teams links to choose your preferred delivery model and start the conversation. Private sessions run at a day rate — details on the booking page. Sessions can run on any available weekday.

Yes. Every session includes printed or digital reference materials and a post-training summary sent to the organiser. Participants keep the materials.

Cancellations made more than 72 hours before the session receive a full refund. Later cancellations can be transferred to another session date within 90 days.

Yes. You may not implement it directly, but you can absolutely ask the right questions and expect better architecture from your team.

One person — me, Christopher Ross. Every post comes from work I delivered or trained on. No ghostwriters, no AI drafts, no syndicated agency content.

Real. The original publish date stands. When a post needs updating, the body is revised and a "Last updated" line is added — the URL and date stay put.

Short quotes with a link back are welcome. For full reposts or syndication, get in touch via the contact page first.

No. Every article comes from client or training work I delivered.

Clients I have delivered for, WordPress.org users reviewing plugins I publish, LinkedIn recommendations, and post-engagement email. Each card links back to the original source where one exists publicly — the WordPress.org review page, the LinkedIn recommendation, or the case study the quote was pulled from. Nothing here is paraphrased or reconstructed.

No editing — typos and all. The selection is for variety: different services, different team sizes, different countries, different decades. Some testimonials are short because the writer kept them short. The page is not a wall of five-star superlatives, and it is not meant to be.

Public-source testimonials link back to the verifiable original — the WordPress.org plugin page, the LinkedIn recommendation, the platform that hosted the review. Email-source quotes are attributed by initial, role, and region by default, with full name and engagement context only where the client gave written consent to attribution. If a card looks anonymous, that is the consent boundary, not a sign that the quote is invented.

Yes, please. Email or LinkedIn message works for a direct quote; if the engagement included one of my free plugins, a review on the WordPress.org plugin page is the most useful place because it helps other potential users too. Either route reaches this archive on the next refresh.

Start with the page that sounds like your situation, not the page that sounds like the work you think you need. A newsroom worrying about editorial workflow lands on the newspaper page; a college worrying about LMS integration lands on the LMS page. Each page points at the matching engagement on the services index once the fit is obvious. If two pages sound half-right, the 20-minute discovery call sorts it faster than reading a third one.

These are entry pages framed by your situation rather than by the service catalog. A newsroom that needs editorial workflow lands here on the newspaper page, not on the seven-tier services index. Each /for/ page maps to the right engagement on /services/ once we know which one fits — they are the doorway, not the work itself.

Honest answer: sometimes you should not. An agency with a project manager, a designer, a developer, and a QA lead is the right shape for a six-figure rebuild on a hard deadline. What I offer instead is one senior practitioner who has been doing WordPress since 2007, answers your email directly, and bills at a senior rate without the agency overhead stacked on top. For audits, rescues, training engagements, and builds where you want the person doing the work to also be the person on the call, that trade usually lands in your favour.

A /services/ page like /services/wordpress-audit-deep/ is a price-banded engagement type — what gets done, who does it, what it costs. A /for/ page is a vertical framing — what tends to be hard about WordPress for that kind of organisation, and which engagement type fits. If you already know whether you need an audit or a build, /services/ is the faster route. If you only know the shape of your situation, /for/ is.

Probably. The pages here are the scenarios that have come up enough on discovery calls to be worth writing down; plenty of work happens outside them. Less common situations route through the contact form — describe what you are trying to ship and I will point at the closest fit on /services/, or tell you honestly that I am not the right person for the job.

Probably. The pages listed here are the ones that have come up enough on discovery calls to be worth writing down. Less common scenarios route through the normal contact form — describe what you are trying to ship and I will point at the closest fit on /services/, or tell you that I am not the right person for the job.

Some do, where the scenario maps cleanly to a fixed band. Others point you into the relevant /services/ tier and let the price come from there once the build is scoped. Either way, the 20-minute discovery call confirms the band before any written scope goes out.

Scope changes are normal — the audit usually surfaces things the original scope did not anticipate. New work is added through a written change request with a fixed price and a revised completion date. You decide whether to approve it. The original scope keeps its original price.

Yes. Mutual NDAs and standard professional-services contracts are routine. For larger engagements I work from your paper or mine, whichever your procurement team prefers.

Often the best outcome. I work directly with in-house developers, designers, and content teams — code review, pair work, and structured handover all in scope when the engagement calls for it. The aim is to upskill the team, not replace it.

In a Git repository you own and control — typically GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. I push branches and open pull requests; you approve and merge. At the end of the engagement, my access can be revoked without losing anything.

The 30-day post-handoff support window covers questions and small fixes on delivered scope. Beyond that, the two recurring vehicles described above (reserved capacity blocks and care plans) cover ongoing needs without the open-ended-retainer trap. For one-off remediation later on, a fixed-scope sprint is usually the right shape — for example, a quarterly review and remediation pass, or a fixed monthly content sprint with a defined output.

Yes, most often the United States, occasionally further. Engagements are remote unless on-site work is specifically scoped. Quotes for non-Canadian clients are typically issued in CAD or USD by request.