WordPress Development in the UK

About WordPress Development

WordPress runs ~43% of the web for a reason, it's the most flexible, well-supported CMS available. We build WordPress sites and WooCommerce stores that load fast, rank well, and stay maintainable past year five. From a 5-page brochure site to a 50,000-SKU WooCommerce catalog, every build follows the same engineering standards: clean code, proper caching, security hardening, and a CMS your content team actually wants to use.

What the engagement includes

• Custom WordPress theme development from scratch
• Custom Gutenberg blocks and block patterns
• WooCommerce store development and customization
• WordPress plugin development (private and public)
• Headless WordPress with Next.js or Astro front-end
• WordPress speed optimization (PageSpeed 90+)
• WordPress security hardening and malware cleanup
• Site migration (Wix, Squarespace, Webflow → WordPress)

Downloads, Gift Aid records and company disclosures: what UK law asks of a WordPress site

If the WooCommerce store sells downloads, such as ebooks, courses, plugins or themes, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 decide what happens between payment and the download link. A consumer buying digital content not supplied on a tangible medium has the usual 14-day right to cancel, and regulation 37 says the trader must not begin supplying it within that period unless the consumer has given express consent and acknowledged that the right to cancel will be lost. If supply starts without both, and the consumer then cancels, they bear no cost for what they already downloaded. Regulation 16 adds that the confirmation sent on a durable medium must record that consent and acknowledgement. WooCommerce can grant download access the moment payment clears, so on a UK store the checkout carries a separate, unticked statement for downloadable items, the order stores whether and when it was ticked, the confirmation email repeats it, and an order without it does not release the link until the 14 days have passed. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 governs quality. Digital content that does not conform to the contract within six months of supply is taken not to have conformed when supplied, unless the trader shows otherwise, and the remedies are repair or replacement and then a price reduction, not a right to treat the contract as ended. Section 46 matters most to anyone selling WordPress code to consumers: where digital content damages the consumer's device or other digital content, and the damage would not have happened had the trader used reasonable care and skill, the trader must repair it or pay compensation, and compensation is due within 14 days of agreeing the consumer is entitled to it. A plugin update that breaks a customer's site is that scenario, which is why release testing, staged rollouts and a rollback path belong in the product rather than the support queue. Whether a buyer is a consumer, and how these rules apply to your products, is for your own counsel.

For a UK charity on WordPress the donation form is a tax record before it is a page, and HMRC's guidance on Gift Aid decides most of its fields. A declaration has to give the donor's name and home address, name the charity, identify the gifts it covers, confirm they are to be treated as Gift Aid donations and explain the donor's personal tax position, and HMRC says a statement such as 'I am a UK taxpayer' does not meet that last requirement. For claims it accepts a house number or name and a postcode for UK addresses but wants full addresses for donors outside the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands included. HMRC accepts a computer record of a declaration the donor filled in, but says transcribing declarations into a database is not an auditable record, because it does not show the donor made the declaration, so the plugin stores each declaration as submitted, with the wording version shown and a timestamp, rather than a Gift Aid flag on the donor record. Retention runs against the usual privacy instinct to delete. A charitable company keeps Gift Aid records until six years after the end of the accounting period, a charitable trust until the later of six years after the tax year and 12 months after the claim, and enduring declarations covering ongoing donations are kept permanently, which the privacy notice has to say. Benefits are the other trap on a WooCommerce site that sells memberships or perks alongside donations. Under HMRC's limits a donor's benefits may be worth no more than a quarter of a gift up to £100, and £25 plus 5 per cent of the amount above £100 for larger gifts, with an overall cap of £2,500 in a tax year from the same charity, so a tier that bundles tickets or merchandise with a donation is priced and flagged accordingly. Whether a particular gift qualifies is for your accountant.

A UK company's WordPress site has to say who is behind it, in more places than a footer. Companies House guidance says business letters, order forms and websites must show the company's registered number, its registered office address, where it is registered, England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, and that it is a limited company. The Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002 add, for any online service, the geographic address where the business is established, an email address that lets people contact it rapidly and directly, the trade register and registration number, and the VAT number where its activity is subject to VAT, all easily, directly and permanently accessible. On WordPress that information belongs in one place, a site setting or a block theme template part fed from it, rather than typed into a footer widget an editor can delete, because every subsite in a multisite network, every microsite on its own domain is a website that has to carry it. The same regulations require an online shop to acknowledge an order without undue delay by electronic means and to give buyers a way to identify and correct input errors before they place it, which on WooCommerce means the order received email and the review step, so neither is cut to shorten checkout. Invoices are the third place. HMRC's notice says a full VAT invoice carries a sequential number, based on one or more series, that uniquely identifies it, along with the supplier's name, address and VAT number, the time of supply, the customer's details, quantities, unit prices and rates, and is normally issued within 30 days of the supply, while a simplified invoice is allowed where a supply is £250 or less including VAT. Where WooCommerce orders are stored as WordPress posts, their IDs share one sequence with pages, products and media, so the invoice plugin numbers in its own series rather than reusing the order ID. Which disclosures apply to your company is for your accountant or counsel.

How we work with UK clients

UK engagements tend to start with procurement questions rather than technical ones. Who holds the data, which law governs the contract, whether you can produce a record of processing if the ICO asks. We answer those in the proposal instead of leaving them to a legal review three weeks in, because that review is where UK projects usually stall.

Invoicing is the other thing worth settling early. We are outside the UK, so services we supply generally fall under the reverse charge and your finance team accounts for the VAT rather than paying it to us. Our invoices say so explicitly. We quote in pounds, the figure does not move with the exchange rate mid-project, and payment by bank transfer avoids the card fees that make a five-figure invoice unnecessarily expensive.

Indicative pricing in GBP

Converted from our published Indian rates and rounded. Exchange rates move, so the figure on your quote is calculated on the day it is issued.

Questions UK clients ask

WordPress Development: common questions

Other markets we work in