Starters, tools, and the stack I use

The Roots starter theme. Blade templates, Tailwind v4, Vite. Every site I build from scratch starts here.

The language everything runs on. Typed functions, match expressions, named arguments. Nothing exotic.

CSS utility framework. Token-based, no config file needed. Fluid type with clamp(), mobile-first always.

Asset bundler. Fast, simple config. Handles CSS, JS, and image hashing for cache-busting.

The IoC container that makes Sage feel like a proper application. Service providers, Blade directives, view composers.

Command-line tools for WordPress. Database exports, plugin management, custom commands. Most deploys never touch wp-admin.

PHP dependency manager. Every project has a composer.json. No manual library downloads.

PHP code style fixer. Runs in CI before every deploy. Catches whitespace and formatting issues automatically.

Pages are built from core blocks plus custom blocks registered with block.json. No Custom HTML blocks.

Checks escaping, sanitizing, nonces, i18n, and prepared SQL on every changed line, in CI and after each edit.

Static analysis at level 5 with WordPress and WooCommerce stubs. Catches type bugs before a reviewer does.

The theme shop, cart, checkout, and downloadable zips, rendered through Blade templates.

Terminal agent for planning, refactors, and reviews on this site. Runs my shared playbook rules and a PHPCS hook after every PHP edit.

Version control and CI/CD trigger. Every project lives in a GitHub repo. Pushes to main kick off builds and deploys automatically.

Automated build and deploy pipeline. Runs Composer, npm, and the release zip on every push. Zero manual uploads.

Database GUI for local MySQL and SQLite. Useful for inspecting WordPress tables without writing raw SQL.

Terminal. Nothing special — zsh with a minimal prompt. SSH into servers, run WP-CLI, tail logs.

Managed WordPress hosting for this site. LiteSpeed cache, PHP 8.3+, hPanel. Theme installs from the GitHub theme-latest zip.

Theme deployment method for this site. CI builds a zip, publishes it as a release, and wp-admin pulls it over HTTPS. No FTP.

Local WordPress for development. No MySQL required, no Docker overhead.

Site traffic, page performance, and audience data. Linked through Google Tag Manager.

Single container for all tracking scripts. One snippet on the page, everything else managed in GTM.

SEO titles, descriptions, and schema per page. The theme fills sensible fallbacks when a field is empty.

Pings Bing and other engines the moment a page is published or updated, so new work gets crawled fast.

Bing Webmaster Tools for search performance. Microsoft UET for ad conversion tracking.

Workflows behind the site forms and notifications, triggered by webhooks from WordPress.

My public rules repo for Claude Code. One install, then every session picks up the latest standards.

Project notes, specs, and to-dos in one place.

Performance, SEO, and best-practice audits on key pages after every visible change. Target is 90+ on mobile.

Automated WCAG 2.1 AA checks. Paired with a manual keyboard and screen reader pass, because tools miss things.

Display and heading font. Clean, reads well at both large and small sizes. The workhorse.

Body text font. Slightly warmer than Inter. Works well at the 1.1–1.2rem range.

Code font. Used in blog post code blocks and the monospace CSS variable.

Design when a client needs wireframes or component specs before I build. Not a daily tool — I prefer designing in the browser.

Syntax highlighting for blog post code blocks. Copy button added via a small custom JS module.

Canvas and model-driven apps for Microsoft 365 environments. Used at previous roles and on client work when it is the right tool.

Workflow automation. Approval flows, SharePoint triggers, Teams notifications. Useful when a team already lives in M365.

Common data source for Power Apps. Lists, document libraries, and permissions.