Custom plugins, themes, REST APIs, and application-class WordPress builds, built to the standard they will still be maintainable by a developer in three years.
WordPress since 2007 · custom post types, REST endpoints, Gutenberg blocks, WP-CLI, and site-specific plugin architecture · 21 plugins published on WordPress.org · $275/hr CAD · Fort Erie, Ontario
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What brings people here
A plugin was installed to solve a problem and it solved it badly. Five years of “we’ll refactor that later” has accumulated into a codebase nobody wants to touch. The developer who built the custom theme is gone and left no documentation. The site works, mostly, until something changes, and then it doesn’t.
The work here is bringing WordPress engineering discipline to codebases and features that need it: clear data models, hooks used as designed, queries that don’t kill the server at 500 concurrent visitors, code that a competent developer can read in two years.
What I build
- Custom plugins ($2,750–$22,000): A feature you own that keeps working when the requirements change, built as a real plugin instead of bolted onto the theme, so it survives the next update and the next redesign. Under the hood that is REST endpoints, outside integrations, and clean data models, scaled from a focused utility up to an application-class build. Three-tier ladder by complexity, see Investment below.
- Theme development: A site your team can actually run day to day, and that the next developer can pick up without a rescue mission. Fast for visitors, shaped around how your editors really work, and documented so the handoff is not a cliff. Block-editor-native or classic, whichever fits.
- REST API extensions: Headless integrations, third-party data syncs, mobile app backends, external reporting dashboards.
- Application builds ($24,000–$75,000): A platform that still holds when the traffic climbs and the org chart changes, so you are not rebuilding it in two years. Multi-site networks, the access control a larger team needs, and data models built to carry the load, for the cases where WordPress is genuinely the right platform. Priced against the Team Site / Scaled Team / Newspaper ladder.
- Codebase reviews and rescues: Audit of an inherited codebase, priority list of what needs fixing before anything new is built, and a clear statement of what the site can safely do now.
Who this is for
- ✅ Businesses whose WordPress install has grown past what plugin configuration can solve: the next problem requires code.
- ✅ Development teams that need a senior contractor for a complex feature or a codebase that has gotten away from them.
- ✅ Organizations migrating or rebuilding a platform that has to keep its search traffic through the transition.
- ❌ Projects budgeted under $2,750. Smaller work is better served by a developer at a lower rate who is not senior-pricing an hour-long fix.
- ❌ Buyers who need an embedded developer on Slack all day. I work project-based or on a structured retainer, not hourly availability for operational support.
What it costs
The senior-developer rate is $275 CAD/hr. The custom-plugin and bespoke-development engagements ladder by complexity:
- Custom plugin, simple ($2,750–$5,500): A single CPT, REST endpoint, admin UI, or integration point. The kind of plugin that does one thing well.
- Custom plugin, mid-complexity ($5,500–$14,000): Multi-system integration, third-party API connector, CPT + taxonomy + admin UI, capability-and-nonce surface across multiple subsystems.
- Custom plugin, complex ($14,000–$22,000): Multi-CPT systems, public API surface, WP-CLI command set, full plugin architecture. The flagship custom-plugin tier.
- Team-Run application builds (from $7,500): Multi-contributor editorial WordPress with custom development on top, the Team Site tier.
- Scaled Team flagship (from $24,000+): Production infrastructure builds. Multi-property, complex access control, data-model-heavy work where WordPress is the right platform and the architecture has to hold at scale.
Every engagement starts with the free 20-minute discovery call, followed (if it makes sense) by a paid scoping session (1–3 hours) that produces a written technical spec. Scoping hours credit against the build if you proceed; the spec is yours to keep if you do not. See the canonical custom-plugin engagement page for the full process.