A creative Freelance Web developer
I specialise in WordPress at scale for performance, accessibility, security and SEO.
I'm also good with all aspects of agency life.
- Martha Baumforth Leadbetter, Project ManagerI have worked with James on a number of projects. During the course of the most recent project James worked on a legacy platform with limitations.
James is able to provide creative solutions for a range of features, designs, and issues. Working with James has been a wonderfully collaborative process and James is incredibly helpful and willing to get help solve any issue big or small with the same level of detail. A massive thanks to you for making a project manager’s job move at pace and with great success!
I build, fix, and maintain websites that actually work the way they’re supposed to (I hope!). Over the last twenty years I’ve worked across agencies, contracts, and in-house teams, which means I’ve seen an array of project politics and technical hurdles, and I know how to keep things moving for stakeholders, production teams, and end-users alike.
My focus is on bespoke WordPress development at scale — everything from building custom themes and plugins from scratch to architecting hosting setups that won’t fall over when traffic spikes.
I run my own secure and sustainable hosting platform (with energy savings of up to 60%!) and work routinely with complex infrastructure like AWS and Hetzner, so projects can handle real-world demand, whether that’s thousands of patients logging into an NHS platform or race fans hitting refresh on a hospitality site.
Performance, accessibility, and SEO aren’t add-ons for me, they’re part of the build.
I’ve delivered measurable gains in Core Web Vitals, shipped WCAG-compliant interfaces, and fixed the kind of SEO problems you only notice once traffic tanks.
Whether it’s improving site speed, making content editable without breaking layouts, or untangling a decade of legacy code, I take a pragmatic approach that balances technical detail with business goals.
Alongside this, I’ve worked on:
Campaigns & brand work with agencies like Wieden+Kennedy, Saatchi & Saatchi, Grayling and Wolff Olins.
E-commerce builds tailored to unique requirements, from custom checkout flows to full hospitality booking systems.
Learning platforms and patient education systems with LearnDash and custom WordPress extensions.
Performance and accessibility audits, followed by the fixes that actually matter.
Day-to-day site support and maintenance — updates, bugfixes, routine testing — the unglamorous work that keeps sites alive.
Below you’ll find selected case studies — from large-scale corporate builds and NHS platforms through to heritage racing sites and high-profile campaigns. Each one shows a different slice of the work I do, but the common thread is the same: build something that lasts, performs, and serves its users.
If you’re looking for a freelance developer or contractor who can drop into a project and make things better without causing a fuss, that’s me.
Some Recent Projects
Core skills and beliefs
What I can do, and what drives me
Development
Full stack (mostly!) and more.
- I work daily With HTML, SCSS, CSS, JS and PHP
- Server admin/maintenance and performance
- Security
- CWV, Lighthouse and web performance
- Accessibility (WCAG/ARIA)
- Webapps/WordPress at corporate scale
- Managed hosting
- E-commerce
- Email development
Sustainability
Some people don't want to watch the world burn.
I’m driven by sustainability and ensuring my work performs nicely while always striving to reduce the energy requirements of hosting, such as:
- Developing a bespoke hosting platforms with energy savings of up to 60% while using only renewable energy
- Sourcing green and ethical hosting, domain providers and DNS services
Direction
Working to create cohesion and harmony across teams
Having worked in design, development, print, sound and video as production, team leader and business owner, I can relate to most and create a stronger team.
By opening often difficult conversation paths between different skill sets, I can bring out the best within a team in a friendly, informal and open way.