My journey as a WordPress web developer in Edinburgh and Scotland.
From print rooms on Gorgie Road to custom WordPress builds for science centres, charities and national clothing brands — here’s how danelian designs grew, what nearly a decade of WordPress work has taught me, and where it’s heading next.
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From the print room to the web
My journey into web development didn’t start in an agency or a computer science department. It started around 2016 on Gorgie Road in Edinburgh, in the world of print, signage and physical branding.
I was working at Print & Sign Centres — later connected with Evolve — surrounded by vehicle graphics, shop signage, brochures, business cards, window displays and the kind of real-world marketing that has to look right when a customer is standing two feet away from it.
That background gave me something a lot of purely digital designers never get: a proper understanding of how businesses actually present themselves. A logo on a van, a sign above a shop, a printed flyer, a homepage and a Google search result all need to feel like part of the same brand. That principle still shapes how I build websites today. I don’t just build sites that technically work — I build ones that feel like they belong to the business behind them.
Discovering WordPress
I learned WordPress by doing. At first, that meant basic content updates, image preparation, and tidying page layouts. But it didn’t take long to see how much more was possible when you stopped treating WordPress like a glorified page builder and started treating it like the flexible platform it actually is.
I worked through theme structure, templates, custom post types, Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce, page builders, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SEO fundamentals, hosting, security and analytics. Every project added something new. What started as a practical skill steadily became a career.
The best WordPress developers aren’t the ones who know every plugin — they’re the ones who can step back, look at a business problem, and build the right thing inside WordPress to solve it.
Launching danelian designs in 2017
In August 2017, I launched danelian designs — going from employed in the print and signage world to running my own web design business in Edinburgh. That meant learning client communication, quoting, project management, hosting, support, design, development, SEO, invoicing and long-term maintenance, mostly in parallel.
Since then I’ve worked on hundreds of websites across charities, ecommerce brands, hospitality, care providers, events organisations, national membership bodies and ambitious small businesses. The studio grew from a small freelance setup into a proper WordPress web design and digital support service, working with clients across Edinburgh, Scotland and the UK.
A website isn’t just a digital brochure. For most businesses it’s the first place a customer, donor, visitor, parent, patient or stakeholder forms an impression. That responsibility is taken seriously here.
Long-term work with Dynamic Earth
One of the most formative projects in my career has been long-term work with Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh’s science centre and visitor attraction.
I’ve supported the Dynamic Earth website for several years, working across maintenance, SEO, ecommerce ticketing, accessibility, analytics, event pages and custom WordPress functionality. The work has included improving event pages, building and maintaining a custom calendar, adding event schema markup, working on WooCommerce and ticketing journeys, supporting accessibility improvements, and helping the marketing team with content structure and conversion improvements.
Dynamic Earth isn’t a simple website. It’s a live, public-facing platform with events, campaigns, ticketing, school visits, visitor information and marketing priorities running in parallel. That kind of work teaches you to think beyond the design and consider the full user journey from search result to ticket purchase.
Scouts Scotland and large-scale WordPress
Another formative project was Scouts Scotland. I built the Scouts Scotland website, including custom SVG animations and a custom event system using FacetWP for filtering.
This kind of project goes well beyond standard page layout work. It needs careful planning of content structure, filtering logic, custom post types, animation, responsive layouts and the stakeholder requirements of a national youth charity. Larger organisations need WordPress to do more than display pages — they need it to organise meaningful volumes of content in ways that visitors can navigate easily.
Custom systems, calculators and booking tools
A lot of my WordPress work isn’t the polished homepages clients see — it’s the practical systems that make websites genuinely useful. Custom builds over the years have included:
- Quote calculators with dynamic pricing logic
- Booking calendars with real-time slot availability
- Time-slot systems integrated with admin-editable pricing
- Confirmation flows with custom email logic
- Front-end availability widgets
- Dynamic form calculations with custom field logic
- Custom gallery and resource systems
- PDF output tools
- Product builders for configurable items
One example: a custom quote-and-booking system where users answered a short series of questions, received a calculated project estimate, and saw available consultation slots based on real booking data — all without leaving the site.
This kind of work needs more than installing plugins. It needs an understanding of how data flows, how users interact, how the admin team manages the content and how the final experience should feel from end to end.
SEO and AI search
Search engine optimisation has been a major part of the work for years. For me, SEO isn’t an optional add-on at the end of a project. It has to be built into how a website is structured from the start.
That means proper heading hierarchy, fast-loading pages, optimised images, internal linking, schema markup, metadata, mobile usability, technical crawlability, clear page intent and content that genuinely answers what people are searching for. Working with tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs and Semrush has shaped how I approach the technical side of SEO across every project.
In recent years, the work has moved further into AI, automation and search visibility beyond traditional Google rankings. Search is changing. Businesses now need to think about how their content is understood by AI assistants and answer engines, not just by Google’s crawler. That means websites with clear structure, strong topical authority, well-written service pages, helpful FAQs, schema markup, fast performance and content that answers real questions clearly.
At danelian designs, this is now a key part of how I think about website strategy. It’s no longer enough to simply have a website. Businesses need websites that explain who they are, what they do, why they’re trustworthy and how they help — in a way both humans and modern search systems can understand.
Managing brand portfolios at Norty
More recently I’ve worked as a Senior Digital Marketing Executive at Norty, managing a portfolio of around 11–13 WordPress and brand websites across the clothing and garment decoration industry.
That role has involved working with external SEO and paid media agencies, setting up Ahrefs across brand sites, supporting GA4 and technical SEO, supporting staff using Elementor, WPBakery and Gutenberg, troubleshooting WordPress issues, working with product data and large image libraries, and supporting workflows that connect Business Central to multiple websites.
That kind of role gives you experience as more than just a developer. Websites don’t exist in isolation — they connect with product data, marketing teams, sales teams, analytics, CRMs, image libraries, hosting platforms and the wider business systems behind them. Understanding that ecosystem is increasingly part of doing good WordPress work.
One of the most interesting pieces of work has been building a custom AI chatbot for garment decorators and printers — a helpful assistant that supports users with product guidance and business-specific knowledge. It points at where WordPress is going next: AI-assisted websites, smarter search, better user journeys, personalisation and more helpful customer experiences.
What this means for your business
The combination of print and signage, branding, WordPress development, SEO, analytics, AI tools, client support and marketing strategy is unusual. It means I can look at a website from several angles at once — designer, developer, SEO consultant, marketer and business owner — rather than from just one.
That matters most for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t want to deal with five different specialists just to get their website working properly.
If you’re looking for a WordPress web developer in Edinburgh, a WordPress web designer in Scotland, or a freelance WordPress specialist anywhere in the UK, danelian designs covers the full picture: design, development, SEO, hosting, analytics, accessibility, maintenance and the kind of custom functionality that turns a website into a genuine business tool rather than a static brochure.
Discovery calls are free, conversational, and you’ll get an honest read on the right path for your business.
gregory@daneliandesigns.co.uk — or use the contact section on the homepage.