WordPress FSE developer for agencies and product teams
change this → and this → even everythingHow I came to WordPress — twice
The first time, my wife brought me. I was a PHP developer raised on Zend Framework and looked down on WordPress. Around 2008 my wife was building her homemaker blog and kept asking me how to upload a theme via FileZilla. She kept going; I came back to web development with a fresh look at WordPress. By 2012 I had set up a WordPress development department for an advertising agency. The full story on WordPress.org
Then I led it at scale. As Head of Web Development: several offices, 20+ people, dozens of WordPress projects a month.
The second time, a rejection changed my approach. The CTO of a leading WordPress agency turned me down for a role — in two sentences:
Hi Anatoliy, We are primarily looking for people that already have experience working in large WordPress agencies, and that have demonstrated work on Block Editor builds for mid-market/enterprise clients. The preferred candidate is likely to have React development experience, and show direct experience of theme.json, patterns, templates and FSE. — Paul Halfpenny, CTO, Filter
Since then it is FSE first: native Full Site Editing before a developer’s ambitions and vision.
Theme development
At 8Guild I went deep into premium themes as products: maintaining and growing award-winning ThemeForest themes, with all the thorny paths of review and validation before every release. Those were the early days of Gutenberg: our themes were built on WPBakery, and everyone switched Gutenberg off with Classic Editor 🙂
- Experience — 8Guild: premium ThemeForest themes on WPBakery
Full Site Editing, theme.json
Before that letter I already worked with Gutenberg — but not natively: blocks were built with ACF Pro. After it, I moved to native FSE: block themes, theme.json as the design system, style variations.
- Project — Venture fund website on FSE
- Project — FSE WooCommerce store
- Open source — 4WP Style Switcher — theme.json style variations per page
- Open source — 4WP Responsive — responsive presets from theme.json
Patterns & templates
- Project — FSE build with front-end pattern preinstall (NDA)
- Project — Knowledge base with learning path
Gutenberg blocks (ACF / React)
- Project — Knowledge base: React blocks, TypeScript search
- Project — Paid content platform: ACF blocks
- Project — Corporate redesign: ACF blocks, animation, video
- Open source — 4WP FAQ · 4WP Smart Link · 4WP Advanced Code
Multisite
- Project — High-load investment platform on Multisite
- Experience — Eddy LMS: WordPress Multisite for universities and schools
WPML / Polylang
- Project — Apartment hotel booking platform (WPML)
- Project — Business centre website (WPML)
- Open source — 4WP Polylang API Sync
- Thought — WordPress Multilingual: Complete Control Through API
Work with me
Looking for a WordPress FSE developer or a freelance Gutenberg developer? I build block themes, theme.json design systems, patterns and custom blocks for agencies and product teams.