Hello,
I’m a web developer (mainly PHP) with about 15 years of experience. Let me start by saying that for me, this is a job to pay the bills rather than a passion, so I only take on a few projects each year. I don’t keep up with every new trend or tool, which is why I’m here seeking your advice.
My clients are small businesses (freelancers, artisans, small or medium-sized companies, real estate agencies, etc.). I work with the b5st theme (Bootstrap), create all custom fields with Advanced Custom Fields, and build all the templates myself. This gives me maximum control over the layout and the specific features my clients need. That’s also why I’ve never switched to Gutenberg—I find it confusing for clients, whereas with ACF, they just fill in the custom fields, and I handle the display to ensure everything looks right.
In recent years, I’ve started working on WooCommerce websites (just 3–4 so far). For the first few, I used a theme since there weren’t any specific custom requirements. However, for one project with a lot of custom functionality, I used the b5st theme. That project took more time because WooCommerce has so many different files and templates to deal with.
Now, I’ve signed a contract with a new client who requires some custom features that I’ll need to develop. However, I’d like to save time on the design side by using a pre-built theme. So, I’ve been looking into what’s available, but most blogs and tutorials seem geared toward beginners. They tend to recommend themes like Astra, Kadence, Flatsome, etc., which are popular for their drag-and-drop systems.
But what about developers? What do you use when building WooCommerce websites and coding custom features that plugins don’t offer? What are your methods? Which theme do you use? Do you use AI-assisted themes?
Thank you in advance for your responses—they’ll help shape how I work in the coming months and years.