Hire Dan as a Contract WordPress Developer

Hire Dan Harrison for interim WordPress project development and when you need additional development capability on your team

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Why have a Contract WordPress Developer?

Recruiting WordPress and PHP Developers can be very time-consuming. If you have several projects on the go, and insufficient developers on your team, you’ve got a resource problem. There’s a risk that your projects will be delayed, which might result in delayed contracts, a negative impact on your cash flow, or having frustrated clients.

I’ve been there, recruiting developers can be very frustrating! By hiring me as a Contract WordPress Developer on a per-project or short-term basis, you’ll benefit from having a fast-learning developer on your team whilst you’re still looking for developers in the medium-term.

Hiring a temporary contractor to give you additional resource is a realistic and effective way to get projects completed and signed off. Even if you’re doing projects internally rather than for clients (on an agency basis), you can boost your development team quickly to help you achieve your milestones (which I bet are probably a bit tight!).

 

What could I help you with as a Contract WordPress Developer?

  • Additional help to your team as a fullstack or backend WordPress developer
  • Troubleshooting the more complex elements of a project
  • Helping your team capture requirements from a client
  • Creating code for your frontend team to work from, such as integrating APIs.

 

Why have me as your Contract WordPress Developer?

Dan Harrison My name is Dan Harrison, I’ve been writing code for a very long time! I’ve been working with WordPress since 2005, so that’s about 17 years now!

I’ve been running WP Doctors since 2010. I’ve had staff and contractors in the past, but I find that I enjoy keeping things simple.

I find that I am at my best when I’m a developer, solving problems and producing elegant WordPress-based projects. I love working with new people, and I’m very used to working with a range of different people from different backgrounds.

But OK, I get it, In addition to my technical skills that you’ll see below, why would you want to work with me (as opposed to anyone else)?

  • I’m a fast learner – regardless of what environment you have for developing your WordPress-based projects, I can quickly adapt to the systems and processes you have for developing projects. This reduces the time needed for me to be productive on your team.
  • I have a weird mix of non-technical skills – I often write marketing copy, and have created marketing funnels, landing pages and email sequences for B2B campaigns. This real-world direct-response marketing experience means I’m able to see things from a perspective that nearly all other developers cannot see.
  • I understand technical SEO – page load speed, canonical URLs, 301 redirects with regular expressions, content hierarchy, keyword analysis, backlinks, schema, and more. Whilst I’m not an SEO professional, I understand what’s needed from a technical perspective and can implement them as needed. I can work with SEO (and PPC) specialists to ensure your WordPress projects meet all those needs.
  • I can translate complex technical topics to help non-technical team members understand – I’ve encountered many environments where there’s been something very technical that I’ve needed to explain to others who don’t have that knowledge. I’m renowned for using metaphors and drawing diagrams to explain concepts so that everyone feels part of a discussion and understands what’s going on.
  • I have a very pragmatic outlook – where compromises need to be made, e.g. when there are financial or time-based limitations, I’m often tasked with creating a realistic solution given a number of constraints. Many developers are often either very minimalistic or overly focused on perfection. Often in a business environment, you need something in the middle. Something that’s good enough to get the job done, paired with enough flexibility so that you’ve not made things difficult to extend things later.
  • I’m known for being a brainstormer and ideas person – when you’re really stuck on a problem and you’ve run out of thoughts on solving that problem, I can bounce ideas around with you to help you pick a solution that helps you to move forwards.
  • I’ve won 2 awards for being helpful – both awards I wasn’t even aware I had been entered to win! (photos to follow)

 

But hang on, if I’ve got all of these skills… why would I want to work as a Contract WordPress Developer?

Easy. I get to solve problems, work in a team, and work with new people. It’s fun for me.

And life is too short to not love the work that you do.

 

What Technical WordPress Developer Skills do I offer?

WordPress-specific Technical Skills

  • Creating WordPress themes from scratch – I often use GeneratePress as a base framework, but I have created themes completely from scratch, as well as working with Genesis and Understrap.
  • Creating WordPress plugins from scratch – I hand-code everything myself. I typically use Object-orientated PHP with a PSR-4 autoloader to minimise memory usage.
  • Using the WordPress API – including but not limited to:
    • Complex layouts using the Advanced Custom Fields tool
    • transients (for small time-based caching functionality)
    • caching (e.g. WP Rocket, as well as legacy caching plugins)
    • custom rewrite rules
    • custom frontend and dashboard widgets
    • using WP Cron and the WooCommerce Action Scheduler
    • HTTP requests using the internal WP HTTP API
    • Custom WooCommerce product pages and checkout fields
    • Custom Post Types – both for the frontend of the website, and behind the scenes as a database (example database-style project: Fetaccompli).

 

Technical Skills

  • These are technical skills I actively use as a WordPress developer:
    • MySQL and PHP – Essential for use with WordPress
    • HTML and CSS – this is obvious from a developer perspective but mentioned for completeness.
    • jQuery and vanilla Javascript
    • composer
    • git – for version control (I’ve used subversion in the past)
    • SASS – for compiled CSS
    • CodeKit – I use this for improved productivity rather than npm for building CSS/JS
    • Object Storage – e.g. using Digital Ocean Object Storage
    • Cloudflare and CDN systems (used for improved loading speeds)
    • Creating code to integrate with APIs (e.g. Stripe, Teachworks, FreeAgent, TeamTailor, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, Infusionsoft/Keap, many CRM systems, ChargeBee and many more!)
    • Crafting APIs to be used by other systems. e.g. This ICS Cool Energy Project
  • These are new technologies and skills that I’m learning at the moment.
    • Laravel
    • TailwindCSS
    • Vue.js
    • Redis
    • Worker Queues – e.g. with RabbitMQ

 

Examples of my WordPress Development Capabilites

The best place to start is to take a nosey at my WordPress Project Portfolio. When we have a conversation, I’ll ask lots of questions about what help you need. I can then record some videos for you to show you similar projects I’ve completed.

 

How long can you hire me as a Contract WordPress Developer?

Whilst you can hire me for as little as one day, I’ll obviously offer more value to you and your team if I’m more familiar with you and your business. If you wish to work with me on an ad-hoc or sporadic basis, then that’s possible too (subject to my existing scheduled commitments).

 

Let’s have a discussion…

To have a discussion over availability, schedules and what your product might entail, please contact me via email or book a call in my diary directly.