CV
Who you are actually working with.
Most agency about pages are written to sound impressive. This one is written to be checked. Every claim below is backed by a page on this domain: the case studies carry the numbers and the diagnosis behind them, the rate card is published rather than quoted, and the build log for this site lists what is live and what is not. If a line here cannot be pointed at, it should not be here.
At a glance
The short version.
Alin Boatca
Freelance web developer and technical SEO specialist
Remote, United Kingdom, UK hours
2 slots open
- Language
- English
- Sector experience
- Fourteen years, including regulated and restricted sectors
- Engagement
- Retained or project, minimum four hours
- Rate
- £95 blended hourly, published on the rate card
- You deal with
- The person doing the work, not an account manager
- Replies in
- Under a day, usually the same one
The work
Building and maintaining high-traffic WordPress sites end to end: custom PHP and theme development, performance and caching architecture, structured data, security hardening, and the SEO strategy and copywriting that make the traffic worth having.
The role
Single technical owner on client sites. Diagnosing the problem, building the fix, deploying it, and verifying it live before calling it done. That runs from custom post types and templates through CDN and cache invalidation, schema, Core Web Vitals, accessibility and WAF rules.
The strength
Diagnosis. Finding the actual root cause when a symptom has several plausible explanations, and proving the fix with before and after evidence rather than assumption. Several of the jobs below were originally briefed as something else entirely.
Core skills
What the work actually covers.
Development
- Custom WordPress: post types, taxonomies, meta, template hierarchy, hooks and filters
- Sage-based custom themes and bespoke page templates built from scratch
- PHP, JavaScript (DOM-safe, no framework bloat), CSS, MySQL
- API integration: Cloudflare API, Geolocation, OpenStreetMap and Nominatim geocoding
- and more
Technical SEO
- Structured data: entity consolidation, @id graph design, Rich Results validation
- Canonicals, indexation and crawl control, cannibalisation prevention
- Keyword and competitor research, SERP analysis
- Backlink auditing, disavow decisions, declining paid-link and PBN approaches
- and more
Performance and infrastructure
- Multi-layer caching: CDN edge, OPcache, Redis, transients, and correct invalidation across all of them
- Cloudflare: API-driven targeted purging, cache rules, WAF, Managed Challenge, IP allowlisting
- Managed hosting deployment, service management and server diagnostics
- Image pipelines: multi-size generation, AVIF, srcset delivery, bulk regeneration
- and more
Security, content and accessibility
- Bot and brute-force mitigation at the edge, honeypots, REST API restriction, HSTS
- Vulnerability triage on third-party plugins, secrets management discipline
- SEO copywriting, plus detecting and rewriting machine-spun content
- WCAG auditing and remediation: labelling, ARIA roles, non-colour affordances
- and more
Selected achievements
Problems solved, with the numbers attached.
All from live client work, and every figure is measured rather than estimated. Most are written up in full on the case studies page, including the wrong first theories. Clients who asked not to be named are described by sector instead.
Measured, not estimated
Numbers from live sites.
Every figure below came off a real client site with a tool anyone can run: Lighthouse, field data from the Chrome UX Report, response headers, or the origin traffic log. None of it is a projection.
Client work
Who the work was for.
Named where the build is already public, described by sector where the client asked for that. No logo wall of companies that were never clients.
Sole technical owner: custom Sage theme, two bespoke tools, caching architecture, schema, security, SEO strategy and copy. Around 151 hours logged.
Theme development, sponsored link compliance and deep-link architecture.
Plugin stack and full site build.
A continuing competitor, keyword, backlink and SERP analysis programme.
Tools and technologies
The stack the work runs on.
Not a logo wall either. These are the tools genuinely in daily use, grouped by the job they do. The tool is never the method: the diagnosis decides which one gets opened.
Platform and code
- WordPress
- PHP
- JavaScript
- CSS
- MySQL
- Sage
- WP-CLI
- Astro
- and more
Infrastructure
- Cloudflare (API, WAF, cache rules)
- Redis / Object Cache Pro
- OPcache
- Nginx / Apache
- and more
Search and analysis
- Ahrefs
- Google Search Console
- Google Rich Results
- Yoast SEO
- Chrome DevTools
- Lighthouse
- and more
WordPress stack
- Secure Custom Fields
- WP All Import
- EWWW Image Optimizer
- ShortPixel
- Media File Renamer
- Contact Form 7
- and more
Hosting and workflow
- Cloudways
- DigitalOcean
- Supabase
- Git
- SSH
- FTP / SFTP
- Obsidian (documentation)
- and more
How I work
The operating rules, not aspirations.
Each of these is applied on this site as well as on client work, which is the only way to tell whether someone means them.
Evidence over assumption
Fixes are verified live, before and after. If it cannot be proved it changed, it is not done.
Root cause, not symptom
When several explanations are plausible, the work is isolating which one it actually is before writing any code. Testing origin directly with a cache buster, for instance, proves whether a problem is the file or the cache rather than guessing between them.
Respect the blast radius
A single functions.php edit can white-screen an entire site, and one careless purge can cool a year of image cache. Back up before touching, scope changes tightly, and use targeted purges instead of nuking everything.
Flag the risk up front
If a change carries SEO or ranking risk, you hear it when it is proposed rather than after it ships.
Honest estimates
Time is logged as it is spent, including work that was scrapped or reverted, and the rate card is published rather than quoted per client.
Documented, not in my head
Every project keeps a living knowledge base: architecture, deployed code, gotchas and a changelog. That is what lets a fix survive a handover, a contributor or a year.
Protect the client
Never destructive without a verified rollback path. Credentials and secrets never leave secure storage. Paid link and PBN approaches are declined rather than quietly accepted.
Proof of craft
This site is the portfolio piece.
The quickest way to judge someone who claims to do this work is to look at what they did where it cost them something. This domain is a static build with no CMS, publishing its own build log including the unfinished parts.
Every page carries JSON-LD that parses and validates, checked on each build rather than assumed. The XML sitemaps carry genuine per-URL last-modified dates instead of stamping everything with the build time. There are no third party hosts on the homepage, which you can confirm in your own DevTools in about ten seconds. Enquiries are handled by a function on this domain rather than a third party form service, behind four layers of spam and flood defence, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC at p=reject. llms.txt and llms-full.txt are generated from the same catalogue that builds the sitemaps, so they cannot drift.
None of that is remarkable individually. Together it is the difference between someone who recommends this work and someone who has done it.
Keep reading
Verify any of it
Book me
Want to test any of this?
Send the URL and the symptom. You get a straight read on what is actually causing it and whether it is worth fixing, which is a faster way to judge someone than a CV.