PHP
Developer

Picks up tickets from Jira or ClickUp, branches off develop, writes the PHP against a local DDEV or Laravel Sail copy of the site, and pushes to a WP Engine or Laravel Forge staging environment for the client to click through before it merges.

Registers custom post types and ACF Pro field groups in plugin code, commits the acf-json folder so field definitions travel between environments, and builds Gutenberg or ACF blocks so the client's marketing person can lay out pages without opening a PHP file.

Clones production to staging, applies WordPress core, theme and plugin updates there first, walks the checkout and the enquiry forms, then books the production run with the client and keeps a restore point so a bad update can be rolled back.

Reads the PHP error log and Query Monitor output, reproduces the white screen on staging, isolates which plugin or hook is throwing it, patches or swaps out the offending code, and writes up the cause in the ticket.

Hooks into WooCommerce filters to change shipping rates by postcode, correct GST-inclusive price display, alter the order confirmation email, or wire up a gateway such as Stripe, eWAY or Tyro against its sandbox, leaving live keys for the client to enter.

Writes migrations, Eloquent models and form requests, moves slow work into queued jobs behind Redis, and watches Laravel Horizon for failed jobs so the client is not the one who discovers an email never sent.

Builds and maintains connections between the site and Xero, HubSpot, MYOB or a warehouse system — mapping fields, refreshing OAuth tokens, logging each request, and re-queueing failed syncs instead of letting orders drop silently.

Runs the site against PHP 8.x in a staging container, works through deprecation notices, replaces abandoned plugins that break under it, and gets the host moved up before the current version stops receiving security patches.

Applies security releases, removes unused plugins and dormant admin accounts, moves credentials into wp-config or .env rather than the database, sets sane file permissions, and reviews Wordfence or Patchstack alerts against the plugins actually installed.

Profiles slow queries with Query Monitor or Laravel Telescope, adds the missing database index, caches expensive lookups in transients or Redis, trims bloated autoloaded options, and re-tests the page before calling it fixed.

Writes WP-CLI scripts to bulk import products, remap categories, rewrite URLs and regenerate thumbnails when a site changes host or structure, then runs search-replace across serialised data so widgets and page builders do not break.

Works out why enquiry forms stopped arriving — checks the WP Mail SMTP or Postmark log, the SPF and DKIM records on the client's domain, and whether an update changed the from-address — then re-tests every form on the site.

Documents in the repository how the local environment is built, which plugins are licensed and where the keys are held, and what each scheduled cron job does, so the next developer on the site is not starting cold.