Three projects, explained properly
Rather than a wall of screenshots, here are three pieces of work with the actual problem, the actual approach and the actual outcome. Two of them are our own properties, which means we can tell you what went wrong as well as what worked.
Twenty-five tools, one core, built from spec files
The problem
A content site needed a suite of interactive calculators and generators — roughly 25 of them — as a defence against search traffic being absorbed by AI summaries. Interactive tools keep the click; articles answering a question increasingly don’t.
Building 25 separate plugins would have meant 25 codebases to maintain, 25 settings screens, and 25 copies of the same API-handling code. Building one giant plugin would have meant every page on the site loading all 25 tools’ assets.
The approach
- One core plugin holding settings, API key storage, affiliate routing with click logging, currency detection, lead capture and a secure server-side API proxy.
- Each tool as a lightweight add-on that registers with the core and inherits all of it.
- Conditional asset loading so a tool’s CSS and JS only load on pages where its shortcode actually appears.
- A generator script so a new tool needs only a spec file and a JavaScript file — the generator writes the full add-on plugin and packages the zip.
- A multi-provider AI proxy across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and OpenRouter, with keys set as wp-config constants and never exposed to the browser.
- Six-language support built into the core, so every tool inherits it.
The outcome
- All 25 tools built and shipped as installable plugins
- Every one PHP-linted, JS-validated and smoke-tested before release
- Tool 26 costs a spec file, not a project
- The same architecture has since been reused across four more sites
Go and use it
All 25 are live and free, no sign-up:
- All 25 tools
- AI API Cost Calculator — the multi-provider AI layer in action
- 27 more on the same core — a different audience, identical architecture
The real result isn’t the 25 tools. It’s that the marginal cost of the next one dropped to almost nothing — which is the only way a small team ships at that volume without the quality falling over.
YdesignersRelevant service: WordPress plugin development
Getting a 554-song content site off a premium theme
The problem
A long-running content site with a library of 554 songs was on a heavy premium theme. Page load times were poor, the theme’s own custom post types held portfolio and testimonial content, custom JavaScript lived inside the theme’s files, and three previously-removed themes had left their settings behind in the database.
Switching themes naively would have deleted content, broken URLs, and silently dropped functionality nobody remembered was there.
The approach
- A full audit before touching anything — SQL across post content to find every builder shortcode, every theme-dependent post type, every asset referenced from the theme folder.
- A staging copy first, noindexed, with the whole migration rehearsed on it before the live site moved.
- Theme custom post types converted to regular posts with 301 redirects, so portfolio and testimonial content survived the theme.
- Custom JavaScript recovered out of the theme and into a dedicated plugin — form redirects, a download countdown, print functionality that would otherwise have vanished.
- Database cleaned of remnants from three retired themes.
- Orphaned shortcode sweep after the switch, since raw unrendered shortcode text in page content is invisible until a visitor finds it.
The outcome
- Every URL preserved or redirected — no content lost
- Autoload weight cut by more than half
- Theme-locked content and scripts moved into plugins, so the next theme change is cheap
- Same process since repeated on two further sites
See the migrated site
The site is live, post-migration, with every URL intact — including its tool suite, which had to keep working throughout.
Relevant service: WordPress development & theme migration
Building the whole chain for selling WordPress plugins
The problem
Selling a WordPress plugin means solving four things at once: taking payment, verifying that a license is real, stopping one license being installed on fifty sites, and getting updates to customers. Off-the-shelf platforms solve this but take a cut and own your customer data.
The approach
- A self-hosted license server as a WordPress plugin — products, plans, licenses, domains and activation logs, with an admin screen where domain limits and pricing are configured rather than hardcoded.
- REST endpoints for activate, verify, deactivate and status, keyed by product and license.
- Domain normalisation so http, https, www and bare variants of the same site count as one activation — customers aren’t charged twice for one install.
- Payment processor verification against the real purchase record, including the API quirks that aren’t in the documentation.
- A daily sync job catching refunds, cancellations and subscription endings that a verify-on-first-use flow can never see.
- A shared update checker hooking WordPress’s native update system, so customers see the standard “Update available” notice instead of being emailed a zip.
- A provider abstraction, so adding a second payment processor later is an addition rather than a rewrite.
The outcome
- 1, 5 and 25-domain license tiers tested and enforced correctly
- Subscription and lifetime products running side by side
- Customers update in one click from their own Plugins screen
- Licensing data stays portable — not locked to one payment platform
- The same client library now ships inside multiple plugins
This is the part most developers underestimate. Writing the plugin is the easy half; the licensing, update delivery and refund handling around it is what turns it into a product you can actually sell.
YdesignersRelevant services: Plugin development · Finished plugins
Earlier client work
Before the plugin work took over, most of our time went into client sites across eight countries — finance, construction, fitness, retail and ministry sites, several of which are still running.
If you’d like references or examples from a particular sector, ask us and we’ll point you at the relevant ones.
Work like this
Plugin development
Custom plugins, plugin suites, licensing and update infrastructure.
Plugin developmentWordPress development
Builds, rebuilds and theme migrations that keep your URLs intact.
Site developmentGot something similar?
Tell us what you’re trying to build or fix. We’ll tell you whether we’re the right person for it.