Websites & WordPress
New builds, redesigns, migrations, WooCommerce, and the "it broke after an update" calls. I've run WordPress from the corner-shop site up to enterprise hosting at Automattic scale.
Web · IT · SEO · Apps · AI
Hand me the tech. All of it.
Your website, hosting, email and office IT, showing up on Google, the app idea, the AI thing everyone keeps asking about, accessibility. If it's tech and your business runs on it, I take the whole pile so you don't have to think about it. I've been in tech since 1996, WordPress for twenty of those years, most recently as sole Senior Solutions Architect for Pressable's (Automattic) enterprise WordPress portfolio, with apps of my own in the App Store and Google Play. You deal with me, start to finish.
What I handle
One person, the whole stack
Hosting, speed & upkeep
Where the site lives, how fast it loads, whether it's still up at 2am, and who's patching it. Care plans that keep things boring in the good way.
Accessibility
Accessibility lawsuits are a volume business now. UsableNet counted more than 5,000 filed in 2025, and over 1,400 of them were against businesses that already had an accessibility widget on their site. A widget doesn't fix the code underneath, and the FTC ordered one widget vendor to pay $1 million for claiming its tool made sites compliant. I test by hand with a keyboard and a screen reader, then fix it in the code.
Apps & custom software
Web and mobile apps, internal tools, and the integrations that tie them into the rest of your business. I've taken my own from a blank file to the App Store and Google Play, so I know what shipping actually involves.
AI & automation
AI that does one job well: intake, document handling, review replies, reporting. Built around an outcome you can measure, with the checks that keep it honest. Not a chatbot bolted to your homepage.
Small business IT
Email and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, domains and DNS, backups, Wi-Fi, laptops, passwords and the security basics. The office tech nobody has time to deal with. I deal with it, on-site around Columbus with house calls, or remotely anywhere else.
SEO & getting found
Showing up when someone nearby searches for what you do. Technical SEO, Google Business Profile, local listings, and content that answers the questions your customers ask.
Content, analytics & support
Copy, reporting you can read, and someone to call when something looks off. The unglamorous stuff that keeps a site earning after launch.
Everything else
The domain renewal nobody remembers, the booking system that won't talk to the calendar, the spreadsheet that quietly runs the business. If it plugs in or logs in, ask me.
For agencies
Your brand, your client, my work
Plenty of what I build never has my name on it. That's the point. Agencies bring me in white-label to build, migrate, fix, audit and maintain under their brand, and the client relationship stays theirs. I don't pitch your clients. I don't sign the footer.
I spent years on the hosting side of enterprise WordPress, taking the calls when an agency's site was slow, down, or broken after an update. When a Fortune 500 executive was losing their mind about it, I was the one they put in the room. I know what it's like to have a client waiting and no answer yet, and I'd rather make you look good than make you explain me.
The code lives in your repos, the logins stay in your vault, and everything gets written down, so nothing depends on me remembering it.
Easiest way to start: send me one site. I'll send back what's wrong with it and what fixing it takes.
How I work
A few rules I design by
- Every element must justify its energy. If a plugin, a popup or a page isn't doing work for your customers, it's slowing them down. It goes.
- Clarity is kindness. Your customers should find the phone number, the hours and the buy button without having to think about it.
- If it isn't perceived clearly, it may as well not exist. That includes people using a screen reader, a keyboard, or a phone in bright sun.
- Beauty that breaks under stress is just decoration. Your site should survive traffic spikes, plugin updates and bad days. It's also why a widget over broken code doesn't count as accessible.
- Nothing is free. Your budget goes to what brings in customers, not to features that look good in a proposal.
- The best design disappears into use. Same goes for me. You get plain English when something needs explaining, and the work stays yours.
Who you'd be working with
I'm Phill Clapham. I've worked in tech since 1996, when I was sixteen, and I've built and run the systems businesses depend on ever since: most recently as sole Senior Solutions Architect for Pressable's (Automattic) enterprise WordPress portfolio, and before that across hundreds of client sites, thousands of migrations, and a lot of custom builds. Before I was a developer I ran my own IT business, doing house calls for homes and small businesses, so I've crawled under plenty of desks too. The person who scopes your project is the person who builds it. You don't get handed to a junior after the sale.
Work
Shipped, open-sourced, and running
Shatterbeat
Twenty boss fights. Twenty tracks. One thumb. A free neon boss-fight game for iPhone, iPad and Android where every orb, every dodge and every strike is locked to the beat — and every track is original music, written and produced by Phill.
Details →Video Poker Edge
Strategy trainer that teaches math-optimal video poker through deliberate practice. Every hold calculated, verified to 0.004% precision. One-time purchase, no ads, no data harvesting.
Details →Nowhere in Particular
Every town has a road you've never turned down. A driving game that points you at one and tells you nothing else — no route, no map line, no picture. You work out the roads. The marker corpus behind it is published openly under ODbL.
Details →Blackjack Edge
The full blackjack skill in one trainer — basic strategy, counting, deviations, bet sizing, and heat simulation. Deliberate practice, honestly built.
Details →anneal-memory
Open-source memory architecture for AI agents — four cognitive layers, a cross-layer immune system, and a hash-chained audit trail. Integrated with a dozen agent frameworks. It's the plumbing my AI work for clients sits on.
GitHub →Levain
Portable cognitive-partnership kit that packages a working AI harness so other operators can run it — methodology, memory schema, and adapters, installable from PyPI. Built on anneal-memory.
GitHub →MicroChaos CLI
Load-testing and chaos engineering for managed WordPress hosting, built as a WP-CLI tool for staging environments where external load testing is restricted.
GitHub →The full track record
Open-source libraries on PyPI, a published paper with a DOI, and two decades of infrastructure — the complete engineering record lives on my personal site.
phillipclapham.com →Start a project
On-site in Columbus, Ohio · remote across the US · projects and ongoing care
Tell me what you're building or what's broken, and we'll scope it. Email is the best way to reach me: me@phillipclapham.com.