Craft CMS Developer based in the UK, building Successful Websites

Based in Scotland but remote working with Craft

I'm based in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, but have been providing Craft CMS development work remotely for many years. With the power of modern communication, such as Zoom, email, and telephone, there is no need to travel or attend time-consuming meetings. That’s the power of remote. You get support from me in a timely manner and when you need it.

Is Craft CMS any good for Seo?

In short, Craft CMS is an excellent choice for SEO. With Craft, you start from a blank canvas, which allows for complete customisation of all tags and technical SEO. With the help of the SEOMatic plugin I use on most builds, giving complete control over important tags such as the title for ranking optimisation and meta description for getting more clicks on Google. Fine control is provided, with social media post images allowed to be set up for each individual page. Google ranks pages now on a number of factors, and one growing area is user experience. One main area of UX is page loading speed. Craft is a self-hosted solution, which gives us developers precise control over the hosting environment. We choose DigitalOcean for our hosting for its incredibly performant platform. All our sites are blazingly quick, and each site is built for performance. This gives your customers a speedy browsing experience on your site, and Google will reward you with high rankings.

Choosing & Hiring a Craft CMS developer

When choosing a Craft developer, you want more than just someone or a team that can put together Craft templates. Updates are an important part of keeping your site safe and secure. Your Craft guys should have some downtime to apply the required security updates, acting proactively and staying on top of them rather than just dealing with it when your site gets fatally hacked due to lack of maintenance.

You want an agency or freelancer with good design chops, or at least access to an experienced designer. Not only should your Craft site be well-coded, but it also can’t be refreshed aesthetically and look like a dog's dinner. A good Craft agency has a well-trained designer on board, either working internally or on a freelance basis, working closely with the developer.

Does your Craft agency talk more about the technical aspects of the website? As a web design agency, we solve business problems, not just edit code. A good developer will give you confidence about the bigger picture, not solely if they are using the latest cool Craft plugin.

Is your potential Craft agency working with a plethora of CMS’s or just a handful? Some agencies and freelancers spread themselves incredibly thin and work with a half dozen or so CMS’s. They are very much jack of all and master of none. At Media Surgery, I work almost solely with Craft, not ExpressionEngine, Joomla, WordPress, Statamic or the countless other CMS solutions out there. This gives a focus and speciality in solving issues and developing quickly.

How many plugins should you use on your Craft site?

In an ideal world, you would use zero, nada plugins on your Craft sites. That way, you know that the code coming along with your CMS is of high quality. The makers of Craft Pixel and Tonic naturally know the software inside out and have a reputation for writing good, reliable software. When it comes to plugins, some developers don’t share the same battle-hardened experience. Note: I did say "ideal world"; unfortunately, we don't live in one, and you'll likely need plugins to implement many of the features found on feature-rich Craft sites. As a developer, I try to keep my Craft plugins to a minimum. The above-mentioned SEOMatic is one I use on most sites, which gives your site a good shot at high search engine rankings. There are a number of other go-to plugins which enhance most of my builds, but the fewer the better.

Craft CMS Laravel move

Craft made a big announcement at the tail end of 2025 that they are going to be building on top of Laravel rather than Yii, which has powered Craft for the majority of its life. I asked plugin expert Josh Crawfaord about the move in a post in October. He was buoyant about the move and optimistic that the transfer to Laravel will go smoothly, with the Pixel and Tonic team making the transition easy for Craft developers.

Craft CMS 6 timings

A common question I get from customers who already have built-in Craft is: when will you move our site over to Craft 6 from the current version 5? The answer normally goes something like this: when other people have tested the water, found the bugs, and the system has stabilised. Craft 5 is a very good product, and the introduction of v6 . Whilst it will push Craft on, it doesn’t immediately make Craft 5 a bad product. All software, yes, all, has bugs, and whilst I will be keen to make the move to Craft 6, we are likely to move most client sites in summer 2027.

Craft CMS web hosting

As mentioned earlier, I use DigitalOcean to host Craft sites. It’s a fully optimised hosting environment with developer access and customisation of the “Droplet” as they are known in DigitalOcean land. You get full server access and can take care of tweaks that really get the most out of your Craft CMS site. Costs start at £350 per month for basic web hosting utilising this performant and optimised solution.

Craft CMS services - maintenance, upgrades, CMS moves from other platforms?

I have experience with many Craft version upgrades, as well as moving from other platforms like the aforementioned WordPress. Moving from WordPress now has an official path with Pixel and Tonic, the creators of Craft, who have spent substantial time on the import process.

All the client sites I handle are on a monthly maintenance package. This makes for a proactive approach to Craft updates. Beware of your Craft developer ‘just’ updating the software when they are making other changes. Security updates need to be addressed.

WordPress vs Craft CMS

Many clients come to me with experience with WordPress. First off, WordPress isn't a fully blown CMS out of the box. It’s a blogging tool, and that hinders it from the off. If you have a simple blog-style website with a few other sparse pages AND have no plans to expand beyond that, then WordPress may be a good solution for you. The core code of WordPress is excellent and written by an experienced crack open-source team of developers. It’s when you stretch WordPress to act like a full-blown CMS that you run into issues. The ‘pages’ and ‘posts’ structure is built into every build, and it’s difficult to get out of. Craft, on the other hand, offers complete customisation across unlimited channels and can be set up with a silly amount of customisation, yet is still easy to use. WordPress is a very good blogging tool, but extending it further makes for a poor authoring experience.

Looking for a Craft development partner and want me to handle the Craft CMS technical stuff?

If you are another web agency and want to handle the design work, then hand over the designs for me to code; that's what I do very well. All my sites are performant, accessible, and built from the ground up. This lets you design, and I handle the whole web developer and technical part.

If requested, I can work as part of your team, and you can provide a branded email address using your domain. I’m happy to do this and work directly with your clients, with you Cc’d for assurance.

This enhances your business profile by putting a dedicated Craft developer on hand.

Always at the end of the phone if need be

I’m easy to work with and dedicated to the cause. You may need to talk urgently, and I’m always at the end of the phone if need be. The preference is email, but there may be times you want to talk directly, and that’s not an issue.

FAQs::

How long will a Craft project take?

It naturally depends on the size of the project. If there is custom development, that can take months, but a small, straightforward build of a few pages, we can be talking weeks.

Why is Craft so good?

It took the best bits from ExpressionEngine, WordPress and other CMS’s and created something that is absolutely brilliant for one-of-a-kind websites. Built properly and with experience, it can be incredibly performant, delivering blazingly fast website load times.

We are another web agency outwith Scotland. Do you provide a white-label service?

Absolutely, a lot of my work from the last few years has been under such an agreement. The work goes on your portfolio and not mine. I have my own direct clients, and can also provide this service to other web agencies.

Why choose Media Surgery for your Craft CMS project?

• Blazingly fast Craft site? You have found the right person. Just browse around this site for an example.
• Working with Craft CMS is an absolute pleasure, and my enthusiasm makes for great work.
• My experience working with Craft CMS and clients means that we don't exceed deadlines.
• I will likely have built a site that will be similar to your own or your clients. This makes your project within budget.
• * As part of a small team, I choose to work on only a limited number of projects and clients at the same time. That makes me always available to deal with matters, however large or small.
• Your success and client success are incredibly important to me, and I genuinely care about every project we work on.

Quality isn't sacrificed, and your site will be built with skill and experience. I see Craft CMS development as a joy, not a chore, and I like to think that shows in my work and close client relationships.

So, what does a Craft site cost?

Agencies can start their CMS pricing at £75,000, working as a tiny agency/freelancer, and I can reduce that fee drastically while maintaining a high level of quality. I’ve worked with such agencies, and whilst they build good websites, they have a lot of overhead and people to pay who don't contribute to the actual website building.

My Craft CMS builds start at £7,500, which is a fair price given my experience and the results I deliver.