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Custom Theme & Template Development

Hand-coded themes for WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Drupal, and Joomla. Block-based, accessible, performance-budgeted from commit one — never built on a page builder, never sold from ThemeForest.

What you get

  • Custom theme written from scratch on the platform you’re on (or moving to).
  • Component library mapped to your design system — typography, spacing, color tokens.
  • Editor-side training session so the team can ship without re-engaging me.
  • Performance budget locked at Lighthouse 95+ on the day of launch.
  • Full repo access, code documentation, and a redirect map if migrating.

What it doesn’t include

  • Visual design from scratch (separate engagement, can recommend designers).
  • Copywriting (same — happy to recommend).
  • Ongoing retainers (optional, never required).

Timeline

3–10 weeks depending on scope. Marketing site with ~10 page templates: ~5 weeks. Content-heavy site with 5+ post types and complex CMS: 7–10 weeks. Live staging URL from day three; demo video every Friday.

Pricing posture

Flat-fee, scoped during discovery. 50% to start, 50% on launch. No surprise tickets, no scope creep without a written change order.

How the work happens

A short, opinionated process. Built around shipping.

  1. 01

    Discovery

    Week 1

    Goals, audience, content, integrations, budget, timeline. The conversation where we figure out if I'm the right fit before we both spend more time.

  2. 02

    Platform recommendation

    Week 1–2

    Honest CMS pick — the one that fits your team, your scale, your roadmap. Written rationale, no platform sales pitch.

  3. 03

    Design direction

    Week 2–3

    Wireframes, design system tokens, two visual directions. Tight feedback loop in Figma. Sign-off before a single line of code.

  4. 04

    Build

    Week 3–8

    Hand-coded blocks, sections, templates. Live staging URL from day three. Async demo videos every Friday.

  5. 05

    Optimize

    Week 7–8

    Lighthouse, Core Web Vitals, accessibility audit, schema, OG tags, redirect map. Nothing ships at < 95.

  6. 06

    Launch

    Week 8–9

    DNS cutover, monitoring, analytics QA, sitemap submission. I'm on call for the first 48 hours, no exception.

  7. 07

    Ongoing support

    Optional

    Monthly retainer for performance monitoring, content ops, new sections, A/B tests. Not required — most clients self-serve after handover.

Selected work

Different stacks. Same standard.

A spread on purpose — Shopify, WooCommerce, Webflow, headless WP, Framer, Contentful + Astro. Same level of craft, every time.

Pick a CMS. Or pick the developer who knows them all.

Start a project