WordPress developer in Germany for custom themes, custom plugins and site care

What a larger WordPress site needs

A WordPress site with a few pages runs on a bought theme and a handful of plugins. A larger one has several editors, sometimes several languages or a WooCommerce shop, and functions that no plugin from the directory covers.

Plugins pile up. Each one covers a part of a task, several load their own scripts on pages that do not need them, and after some years nobody knows which of them the site still uses. An update of one plugin can break another.

Changes land in the wrong place. Code written into a bought theme is gone with its next update, and a function built into the theme is lost when the design changes.

Editors break layouts. When a page builder gives each editor free control over spacing, fonts and markup, the pages drift away from the style guide one by one.

WordPress has fixes for these problems: a custom theme, a custom plugin, Elementor widgets with fixed fields, and a care routine that tests updates before they reach the live site.

Custom themes, custom plugins and Elementor

A custom theme is the design of your site as code: a template for each type of page, your fonts served from your own domain, and no functions the site does not use. Where the site runs on a bought theme, a child theme holds your changes, so the parent theme can be updated without losing them.

A custom plugin holds what your company needs from the site and what no plugin on the market does, for example a calculator, a connection to your CRM or a content type with its own fields. It is independent of the design, so a new theme does not take it along. The code sits under version control, and a CI pipeline can test it before it goes live.

Elementor lets developers write their own widgets. A widget is an input form with text boxes, drop-downs and access to the media library. The editor fills it in, and the widget writes the HTML in the style the guide sets. When the design of a widget changes later, the pages built with it change too, including the old ones. I described this setup for a content team in No broken WordPress pages anymore.

The WordPress care table

This is what I take on for a WordPress site that already runs, and what your company gets from each task. The look at your site after our call shows which rows it needs and how often.

Task	What I do	What your company gets
Core, plugin and theme updates	Install them on the test copy, check pages and forms there, then update the live site	Errors found on the copy before your visitors meet them
PHP version	Test the site on the new PHP version before the host switches it	A site that still runs after the host’s upgrade
Plugin audit	List each plugin with its purpose, its last update and the pages that use it	Unused and abandoned plugins removed with your approval
Theme work	Move changes out of the bought theme into a child theme or a custom theme	Theme updates that keep your changes
Elementor	Build widgets with fixed fields for content your editors add often	New pages in the layout of your style guide
Backups	Back up files and database on a schedule, keep copies off the server, restore one on the test copy	A backup you know can be restored
Performance	Caching, picture sizes, scripts only on the pages that use them, measured before and after	Faster pages, on phones too
Security hardening	Check administrator accounts, user roles, logins, file permissions and plugins without updates	Fewer ways into your site
Users and access	Remove the accounts of people who have left and give each editor the role their work needs	A list of who can change the site

Who I am

I am Michael Wutzke, a WordPress developer in Frankfurt with more than twenty years in IT and media. At Policen Direkt in Frankfurt I was project manager and web developer. I planned and built the web portals of the group, used WordPress for its websites through several launches and relaunches, and managed more than 100 top-level domains for the group from 2016 to 2021.

I have built at least ten websites on WordPress, including single installations, multisites, multilingual sites and WooCommerce shops, and extended them with plugins and templates I programmed myself. My work covers theme setups, child themes, creating and patching plugins, versioning, CI pipelines, user management, hosting and security. I completed the Elementor Master Course and the course Become a WordPress Developer. I have set up and run Linux servers and AWS infrastructure for web portals and hold the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification. Details: Web development.