I’m a WordPress Developer who writes cool shit.
No Fancy CTA needed. If you’re here, there’s a good chance you know of me already. Go ahead and click that button and let’s get started. If not, read on to see how I can help you.
Me, in a nutshell
Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a WordPress developer living in Calgary, Canada. I like to make plugins, tinker with websites, talk at WordCamp and WordPress Meetups, and in general just work with WordPress based sites.
When I’m not in front of a screen, you can bet I’m in the mountains hiking or at the local pub eating far too many hot wings.
And yes, I do know Jason Bourne. Thanks Matt Damon.
What I do
Wordpress Development
The bread and butter of my freelance work. I am a WordPress developer. You can hire me for anything WordPress related. Custom plugins? You bet. Custom themes? I can do that. Custom code for someone else’s plugins and themes? Why not! Are you an agency looking to outsource part or all of a project? I do that. Are you a company looking to bring on a consultant to repair, optimise, and maintain your web presence? Sounds perfect.
WordPress Speed Optimisation
When your site feels sluggish, give me a call. I routinely work with clients to optimise their websites and squeeze every last ms out of their site that I can. I do a ground up, full website optimisation service. Which means everything from the host and the database to your code, plugins, themes and images. This is no 6 step system you read on the internet, it’s my years of experience and critical thought put into your website that speeds it up.
X Theme / Pro Theme Customization
If you use the X Theme or Pro Theme by Themeco, I can help you take it to the next level. With years of experience using these systems and both customizing them and enhancing them for hundreds of users, you can be sure I’m the right guy for the job. From custom blog layouts and search results pages, to enhanced Woocommerce product pages and archives. You may even be familiar with the plugins I’ve created exclusively for X/Pro: Cornerstone Placeholder Images, Cornerstone Custom icons, and the ever so popular Global Blocks for Cornerstone (impressive functionality which Themeco has now rolled out into their theme).
Latest Tips
Adding custom font families to the Pro font manager
July 6, 2018The font manager in Pro theme is a life saver for managing your fonts, but what if you have a custom font file enqueued that you’d like to access? I’ll preface this tip with 2 things: 1) first, this should be considered experimental. The Pro theme builder has the foundation made for custom fonts, which means that at some point ... Read MoreEnabling AJAX Add to Cart on single product views, with X overlay
June 14, 2018One simple tweak I make on many of my Woocommerce based websites is to enable the AJAX add to cart functionality. In many cases, having the user directed to a cart page isn’t ideal for your shop, and a hard reload to the same page is just silly. Someone in the Themeco community asked about how to do this, so ... Read MoreOverride the Pro Theme header assignment for specific pages and conditions
July 17, 2017Themeco’s Pro Header Builder is pretty amazing. From it’s in depth controls to endless styling options, anyone can make a truly magnificent header. But what do you do when the specific page you’d like to target isn’t available as an assignment? How about when you want to show a specific header for logged in users? Or for different user roles? ... Read MoreHow to use Themeco Pro template colors anywhere on your site
May 30, 2017The new pro theme by Themeco has many amazing features. One of which is the colours templates. This allows you to set your branding colours in the Pro editor, and re-use them in header and footer elements. But what about outside of headers and footers? Well, at the time of this post, we still don’t have access to them in ... Read MoreUsing Cloudflare Rocket Loader with X Theme 5 and Themeco Pro
April 11, 2017Cloudflare has quickly become a popular choice among X users, and that’s no surprise. But early on we all noticed one distinct problem: Rocket Loader didn’t play nicely with Cornerstone. We quickly discovered that using a page rule to exclude cornerstone URLs from performance was the key to success. But with this new update, the target URL has changed. This ... Read MoreUpdated Cornerstone Modal Plugin
April 10, 2017Steve Woody’s Cornerstone Modal plugin has been used by a ton of X Theme users. During beta testing of the new version of X, I became aware that a few modifications were needed to make it compatible. Here is an updated version. How to choose the best wordpress host for x themeX Theme and Pro Theme Plugins
Cornerstone Custom Icons
Enables the user to add their own custom icons to the built in Cornerstone and Pro Theme icon controls and elements, thereby removing the reliance on FontAwesome and providing a better opportunity for branding with custom icon sets on your websites. Works exclusively through the use of Fontello’s free icon font service. Updated regularly to work with new theme releases.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/cornerstone-custom-icons/
Cornerstone Placeholder Images
Placeholder.com Images element for Cornerstone and Pro Theme Builder. This plugin provides a quick element to insert placeholder images into your layouts for quick mockups or demo content.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/cornerstone-placeholder-images/
Global Blocks for Cornerstone
The original game changer, released in early 2017. I had been using this set up internally for client for nearly a year, but when the Themeco community started asking for the same functionality, I ported it into a plugin.
it became so popular that Themeco adopted the functionality and the name into their own builder, to ensure their entire customer base had access to it.
You can see the original plugin here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/global-blocks-for-cornerstone/
Custom Icons for Elementor
Enables the user to add their own custom icons to the built in Elementor icon selectors, thereby removing the reliance on FontAwesome and providing a better opportunity for branding with custom icon sets on your websites. Works exclusively through the use of Fontello’s free icon font service. Updated regularly to work with new theme releases.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-icons-for-elementor/