The short version.
I started in web development in 2013 at an agency in Cape Town, doing the kind of work juniors do everywhere: PSD-to-HTML, theme customisation, and learning what production code actually has to survive. I spent a few years moving between agencies, picking up React and Django along the way. From 2016 to 2018 I worked on the Cape Town development team for GradConnection (now Seek Grad), an Australian recruitment platform, building React front ends against a Django REST API.
In 2017 I left South Africa for Hanoi, Vietnam, and started taking on freelance clients. I lived there for four years, working remotely with clients across the world. I came back to South Africa in 2021 and settled on the KwaZulu-Natal coast, which is where I work from now.
The thread through all of it has been the same: I like building things people use, I like working closely with clients, and I like staying long enough to see what gets used and what doesn't. WordPress lets me do all three.
One developer, one client, one bill.
I work alone. One client, one developer, one point of contact. There's no project manager between us, no junior who'll inherit your codebase mid-build, no ticketing queue. When you message me, you get me.
I bill hourly, at a single rate, with a time log you can audit any time. No retainers, no packages, no premium tier. Everyone pays the same rate and gets the same attention. After working this way for years, I can give you confident estimates that hold up.
That model has limits. I can't spin up a team for a three-month rush, and I won't pretend otherwise. But for clients who want a developer they can actually reach, it's the way I've found that works.
What I'm not.
I'm not a designer. I can translate your designs faithfully and make sensible decisions when the spec is ambiguous, but if you need design from scratch, you need a designer.
I'm not an SEO consultant, content strategist, paid-ads specialist, or social media expert. I'll set up the technical foundations for those things to work, and I'll do the on-site SEO properly, but the ongoing strategy belongs with someone whose full-time job it is.
I'm not the cheapest option. My rate is reasonable for experienced WordPress work in the UK and US. If the budget is closer to what entry-level freelancers charge on Upwork, we're not the right fit, and I'd rather say that up front than waste anyone's time.
When I'm not at my desk.
I'm probably either drumming in a punk band or out on a run. Neither is particularly good for my hearing or my knees, but both teach you the same lesson: showing up consistently over years is the only thing that produces real work. Same principle applies to clients.
Husband. Dad. Distinct lack of free time.